The  Failure  of 

Protestantism 

IN   NEW  YORK 
AND     ITS    CAUSES, 


Rev.    THOMAS    DIXON,    Jr. 


BR  555  .N4  D5  1896a 
Dixon,  Thomas,  1864-1946. 
The  failure  of  Protestantism 
in  New  York  and  its  causes 


tihtavy  of  Che  t:heolo0ical  ^tminavy 

PRINCETON    .    NEW  JERSEY 

PRESENTED  BY 

Dr  .  Earl  A .  Pope 

Manson  Professor  of  Bible 

Lafayette  College 


LibhAfHY  OF  ^^HlNGtrON 


MAR      6  2000 


THEOLOGICAL  SEMINAf^Y 


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THE   FAILURE 


OF 


PROTESTANTISM 


IN    NEW   YORK 


AND   ITS   CAUSES. 


BY 


THOMAS    DIXON,    Jr., 
Pastor  of  the  People's  Churchy  Academy  of  Music ^  New  York. 


SECOND   EDITION. 


The  Strauss  &  Rehn 
1896 


LIBRARY  OF  PRINCETON 


PUBLI^ING  Co,, 

MAR     6  2000 


THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


COPYRIGHT,    1896, 
BY 

VICTOR  O.  A.  STRAUSS. 


'  SDebitatcti 

TO 

GEO.  D.  HERRON. 

A  Modern  Prophet  of  the  Kingdom  of  God, 

Professor  of  Applied  Christianity 

IN  Iowa  College. 


AUTHOR'S  INTRODUCTORY  NOTE. 


This  little  book  says  and  proves  that  Protestantism  is  a  fail- 
ure in  New  York.  Three  answers  have  already  been  hurled  at 
my  head  by  the  Theological  Grannies  in  this  neighborhood. 
"You  are  an  infidel!"  "You  are  a  sensationalist!"  "You  are  a 
failure  yourself!"  Quite  true,  dear  grannies,  from  your  point  of 
view.    But  the  answers  are  irrelevant. 

I  might  be  an  infidel  with  full  grown  horn,  hoof  and  tail,  and 
still  Protestantism  be  a  failure  in  New  York,  or  I  might  be  so 
supremely  orthodox  as  to  believe  that  Pope  Loo  XIII.  is  the  scar- 
let woman  of  the  Apocalypse,  and  that  every  man  who  differs 
with  me  in  this  view  is  a  liar,  a  thief,  a  hypocrite,  a  bnite  or  a 
Jesuit — and  still  Protestantism  might  be  a  failure  in  New  York. 

Then,  suppose  I  am  a  sensationalist.  What  of  it  V  Truth  is 
stranger  than  fiction,  and  nature  more  miraculous  than  miracle. 
The  most  sensational  discoveries  of  this  century  have  all  been 
simple  facts.  A  statement  may  be  sensational,  and  its  author 
a  prophet  or  a  clown,  a  philosopher  or  a  fool,  and  yet  it  may  be  a 
fact. 

Again,  it  may  be  true  that  I  am  a  failure — all  the  greater  pity 
since  I  am  a  Protestant  minister!  This  is  not  an  answer.  It  is 
a  confirmation.  It  is  a  confession.  This  is  simply  piling  on  the 
agony  ! 

While  I  dislike  the  business  of  these  denominational  worthies, 
which  is  simply  the  perpetuation  of  ignorance  by  the  use  of  the 
printing  press,  I  assure  them  of  my  kindliest  personal  feelings, 
and  still  hope  for  the  best. 

T.    D.,  Jr. 

New  York,  February  5,  1896. 


PREFACE  TO  SECOND  EDITION. 


It  has  Itcon  a  gratifying  surprise  to  mo  that  this  little  bcvok 
goes  into  its  second  edition  within  nine  mouths,  iu  spite  of  the 
real  agonies  of  our  political  crisis.  It  has  been  the  policy  of  the 
Church  press  in  and  around  New  York  to  carefully  ignore  it,  and 
thus  deny  a  hearing.  The  plan  has  not  worked.  Bi'luved,  you 
have  or  will  frankly  and  promptly  meet  the  issues  raised.  It  must 
be  done  sooner  or  later.  The  so<jner  the  better.  To  my  surprise 
the  Roman  Catholic  press  has  uniformly  given  fair  and  intelli- 
gent revises  of  the  book  in  spite  of  its  explicit  criticisms  of  the 
Roman  policy  and  hopes. 

T.    D.,    Jr. 
New  York,  Dec.  1,  1896. 


Onlv  a  Few  of  the  Many  Press  Reviews 
of  First  Edition. 


From  the  New  York  "World." 
"The  Failure  of  Protestantism  in  NEW  YORK  and  its 
causes"  is  full  of  pepper  and  spice;  that  will  not  delight  the  or- 
thodox, but  its  facts  deserve  the  attention  of  thoughtful  men, 
however  much  they  may  disagree  with  the  remedies  proposed 
by  the  writer. 

Fro7n  the  "  Review  of  Reviews." 
Mr.  Dixon  is  known  for  the  stirring  and  intense  quality  of  his 
preaching  upon  the  practical  questions  of  the  day,  and  he  has  in 
this  little  volume  heaped  up  a  most  terrible  indictment  of  the 
Protestant  churches  in  the  city  of  New  York  for  their  failure  to 
do  their  proper  work  and  to  hold  their  own  in  their  community. 
It  is  by  recognizing  facts  rather  than  ignoring  them  that  true 
progress  is  accomplished,  and  it  will  be  better  for  the  churches 
if  they  take  Mr.  Dixon's  statistics  and  arguments  to  heart  with 
a  view  of  profiting  by  them. 

President  Geo.  A.  Gates,  in  the  ''Kingdom" 
It  is  a  terrific  arraignment  of  the  Protestant  churches  of  New 
York  city  for  the  way  they  have  run  away,  geographically  and 
practically,  from  the  awful  physical  and  moral  and  spiritual 
needs  of  the  city. 

From  the  "  New  Church  Messenger." 
This  is  not  a  Roman  Catholic  book,  as  its  name  would  at  first 
suggest,  but  is  a  very  live  little  volume  written  by  a  Protestant' 
clergyman,  and  arraigns  all  denominations  of  the  Church  in  this 
City,  including  the  Catholic.  Mr.  Dixon's  style  is  vigorous  and 
many  of  his  utterances  might  make  good  aphorisms.    "Institu- 


PRESS  REVIEWS.  7 

tions  that  were  of  use  in  the  past  will  have  no  place  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  future.  They  may  have  belonged  to  the  history  of 
the  infancy  of  the  race,  but  have  no  part  in  the  story  of  the  race's 
manhood."  "The  cry  Back  to  the  old  paths,  is  the  feeble  rally- 
ing call  of  a  reminiscent  senility."  "The  Church  must  either 
lead  or  be  led  in  this  world  movement  of  the  race.  We  are  now 
in  the  first  years  of  the  reign  of  the  common  people."  "Uniform- 
ity gained  by  force  does  not  mean  unity.  The  belief  that  it  does 
is  the  one  tragic  superstition  of  our  history."  But  "The  Failure 
of  Protestantism"  which  it  would  be  more  appropriate  to  name 
"The  Failure  of  Churchism"  is  not  all  a  criticism.  It  believes 
in  the  Christian  religion,  and  describes  the  "religion  of  the  fu- 
ture" which  must  be  "progressive,"  "simple,"  "in  harmony  with 
reason,"  "luminous,"  with  a  "saving"  and  a  "social"  power,  and 
"characterized  by  common  sense." 

On  the  whole  we  greet  "The  Failure  of  Protestantism"  with 
great  pleasure.  It  is  in,  perhaps,  rather  a  modest  external  form, 
but  it  is  vigorous,  purposeful,  hopeful  through  its  severest  criti- 
cisms, and  abounding  in  suggestive  and  helpful  conceptions.  If 
our  readers  should  enjoy  the  perusal  of  this  little  volume  half  as 
much  as  we,  it  would  well  repay  being  purchased  and  read. 

From  the  Jamaica  {West  Indies)  "Post." 
It  is  clever;  it  is  manly  and  outspoken;  and  at  times  it  is  even 
eloquent  and  inspiriting. 

Mr.  Dixon  iS  la  young  man  of  strong  convictions;  and  he  has 
the  courage  of  his  convictions.  The  same  fearless  spirit  which 
he  displays  at  the  Academy  of  Music,he  exhibits  in  every  page  of 
this  book.  It  matters  not  to  him  whether  his  words  are  palate- 
able  to  his  friends  and  his  brethren  in  the  ministry,  or  whether 
they  are  calculated  to  drive  them  all  mad  with  anger  and  cha- 
grin. Sufficient  for  him  that  they  are  true — or,  rather,  that  he 
thinks  they  are  true.  At  all  costs  the  truth  must  be  told.  That 
is  his  creed,  as  it  is  also  his  practice.  And  very  cleverly  and 
epigrammatically  does  he  somtimes  state  his  facts. 


8  PRESS  BEVIEWS. 

As  an  ardent  Protestant,  however,  Mr.  Dixon  reserves  his 
choicest  vials  of  wrath  for  the  Protestant  denominations.  He 
exposes  and  denounces  mercilessly  the  tendency  of  all  Protes- 
tant congretations  to  "move  up-town" — ^to  leave  the  squalid, 
crowded  parts  of  the  city,  and  to  build  churches  only  in  "aristo- 
cratic" quarters.  With  an  indignation  worthy  of  one  of  the  pro- 
phets of  old  he  also  holds  up  to  scorn  the  custom  that  exists  in  so 
many  congregations  of  appointing  as  office-bearers  only  such  men 
as  have  long  bank-accounts  and  occupy  a  good  social  position. 

Altogether,  Mr.  Dixon  has  produced  a  notable  book;  and  it 
would  be  a  good  thing  if  every  minister  of  religion  (Protestant 
and  Catholic)  throughout  the  English-speaking  world  could 
obtain  a  copy  of  it  and  read  it.  Towards  the  close  of  the  volume 
he  puts  in  a  powerful  plea  for  a  simpler  creed — for  less  theology 
and  more  religion — for  an  adaptation,  in  short,  of  the  Church's 
message  and  methods  to  the  wants  of  the  age. 


CONTENTS. 


1.  The  Fact  of  the  Failure. 

2.  Dismantled  Churches  and  Deserted  Thousands. 

3.  Protestantism  becoming  a  Bourgeois  Aristocracy. 

4.  The  Church  of  Christ  a  Democracy. 

5  Sectarianism. 

6  Dead  Theologies. 

J.  The  Success  of  the  Salvation  Army. 

8.  The  Apparent  Success  of  the  Episcopal  Church. 

9.  The  Strength  of  Roman  Catholicism. 

10.  The  Decay  of  Romanism. 

11.  GOODY-GOODISM  and  THE  SCOURGE  OF  ChRIST. 

12.  The  Religion  of  the  Future. 

APPENDIX. 
"  What  are  the  Churches  Going  to  Do  About  It?" 


THE  FAILURE  OF  PROTESTANTISM 

In  New  York  and  its  Causes. 


CHAPTER    I. 

The  Fact  of  the  Failure. 

As  a  Protestani't,  I  have  said  that  Protestantism  in  New  York 
is  a  failure.  For  this  assertion,  I  have  been  bitterly  assailed. 
The  man  who  shows  intellectual  hospitality  is  always  accursed 
by  a  class  of  self-constituted  guardians  of  the  faith — that  faith, 
in  particular,  on  which  their  own  personal  interests  turn.  They 
have  damned  me  as  a  renegade  and  traitor  for  making  this  ag- 
gravating declaration. 

And  yet  facts  are  facts.  Let  us  examine  them.  The  assertion 
that  I  have  made  is  the  utterance  of  a  sorrowful  heart.  It  is 
based  on  six  years  of  the  hardest  work  and  toughest  experience 
of  my  life;  experiences  that  have  written  themselves  in  grey  lines 
in  a  young  and  over-hopeful  head. 

Why  cannot  a  Protestant,  in  love,  speak  the  truth  about  that 
which  most  deeply  concerns  him,  and  try. to  tell  the  truth,  the 
whole  truth  and  nothing  but  the  truth  about  it  ?  Has  a  preacher 
any  more  right  to  juggle  with  facts  than  any  other  man  ?  Is 
lying  wrong  only  in  the  sinner  ?  Has  the  preacher  the  right  to 
lie  about  his  business,  to  put  on  a  bold  face  and  declare  that  he 
is  enjoying  a  boom,  when,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  is  a  bankrupt 
and  his  property  should  be  in  the  sheriff's  hands  ?  If  we  would 
heed  the  squeak  of  the  sectarian  hand-organ,  yes;  if  the  preacher 


12  THE  FACT  OF  THE  FAILURE. 

possesses  common  honesty,  no.  Before  any  evil  can  be  remedied 
we  must  face  the  facts — all  the  facts.  We  must  squarely  face 
them  without  whine  or  apology.  Ours  is  a  century  of  light, 
knowledge,  investigation,  analysis,  facts.  Woe  to  that  creed  or 
cult  that  dares  to  flinch  beneath  the  searchlight  of  the  dawning 
century.    It  is  dead  already. 

THE   SECTiJlIAN   TEMPERAMENT. 

There  is  a  certain  kind  of  mind  that  refuses  to  face  facts 
which  are  disagreeable.  This,  pre-eminently,  is  the  sectarian 
temperament.  Dr.  Momerie  says  that  when  the  subject  of  evo- 
lution first  began  seriously  to  disturb  the  peace  of  the  Church 
of  England,  a  dear  old  maid  of  much  churchly  zeal  sought  her 
rector  in  a  great  state  of  mind  over  the  matter.  She  begged  the 
doctor  to  fully  explan  to  her  the  utter  absurdity  of  such  a  doc- 
trine. The  rector's  explanations,  however,  were  anything  but 
reassuring.  He  told  her  that  he  must  be  perfectly  frank  with 
her  and  siay  that  the  preponderance  of  scientific  evidence  seemed 
now  to  indicate  that  God  did  use  some  such  method  in  creating 
the  world.  She  was  horrified.  She  studied  a  moment  and  then 
tearfully  exclaimed:  "Oh,  doctor,  it  is  too  terrible  to  think  of 
our  illustrious  ancestors  and  those  chattering  monkeys — but,  if 
you  really  think  it  is  so,  for  heaven's  sake  do  let's  hush  it  up!" 

That  policy  may  work  for  a  while.  But  the  facts  will  be 
known  at  last.    And  then  ? 

THE   POSITION   AND    POWER   OF   NEW   YORK. 

What  are  the  facts  as  to  the  condition  and  progress  of  Protes- 
tantism in  New  York  to-day  ?  New  York's  position  and  power 
are  such  as  to  afford  a  supreme  test  of  modern  Protestant  meth- 
ods. She  is  the  centre  of  the  commerce,  society,  art,  literature, 
politics  and  religion  of  the  Western  World, and  her  port,  in  which 
float  the  flags  of  every  nation,  is  the  open  gateway  of  two  worlds. 
The  feet  of  three  million  human  beings  press  her  pavements  daily 
in  the  conflict  of  modern  life.    Here  is  the  scorching  furnace  in 


THE  FACT  OF  THE  FAILURE.  13 

which  are  being  tried  by  fire  the  faiths,  the  hopes,  the  dreams, 
the  memories,  of  that  humanity  that  shall  rule  the  earth  in  the 
twentieth  century.  The  wealth,  the  power,  the  position  of  such 
a  city  are  undisputed.  New  York  City,  in  mere  volume  of  popu- 
lation, is  the  equal  of  three  of  our  great  states.  There  is  a  single 
family  on  Fifth  Avenue,  whose  wealth  is  greater  than  the  entire 
valuation  of  the  State  of  North  Carolina  with  its  1,600,000  in- 
habita'nts  and  48,580  square  miles  of  land.  Such  a  city  sums  up, 
in  its  fevered  life,  the  conflict  of  the  race  in  embryo.  As  the  cen- 
tre of  the  activities  of  humanity,  its  history  is  of  supreme  im- 
portance. In  the  sweep  of  that  resistless  progress  before  us  will 
our  pet  faiths,  fad  and  manners  survive  ?  In  the  roar  of  this 
modern  Babylon  is  religion  increasing  its  hold  on  man  ?  It  is 
doubtful. 

HOLDING   OUE   OWS. 

Is  Protestantism  growing  stronger  here  ?  The  question  is  ab- 
surd to  any  man  who  lives  in  New  York. 

Is  Protestantism  even  holding  its  own  ?  Some  contend  that 
it  is.  Nothing  could  be  more  absurd.  Progress  or  retrogression 
are  the  inexorable  laws  of  life.  Nothing  that  lives  can  merely 
hold  its  own.  It  must  increase  or  decrease  its  powers  of  vitality. 
A  man  must  either  grow  better  or  grow  worse,  wiser  or  more 
stupid,  stronger  or  weaker.  To  stop  is  to  die.  New  York  City  is 
one  of  the  most  godless,  if  not  the  most  godless  city  in  America. 
The  growth  of  churches  and  the  growth  of  population  shows  that 
the  vitality  of  Protestantism  has  declined  steadily  during  the 
last  forty  years. 

The  following  table  shows  the  apparent  gain  in  church  mem- 
bership during  the  last  decade  in  leading  Protestant  Churches. 

1885.  1887.  1891.       1892 

Methodist....  12,588  12,981  13,280  14,140  Net  increase  1552 

Baptist 13,669  13,687  13,952  14,644  Net  increase    975 

Presbyterian..20,308  23,016  23,299  24,737  Net  increase  4429 

Lutheran,....  14, 000  14,000  13,375  Net  decrease    625 


14  THE  FACT  OF  THE  FAILURE. 

How  long  will  it  take  these  churches  to  take  the  world  at  this 
rate?  Are  they  holding  their  own? 

The  Baptists  increased  975  during  the  seven  years  1885  to 
1892.  The  normal  birth-rate  of  their  membership  13,669,  should 
have  given  an  increase  by  birth  of  more  than  3,500  during  this 
period;  their  accessions  from  other  Baptist  churches  more  than 
balancing  their  death-rate.  The  Baptists,  therefore,  managed 
to  hold  about  one-fourth  of  the  children  born  into  their  homes. 
Is  this  "holding  our  own"  ? 

The  Methodists  increased  1,552  during  these  seven  years.  The 
birth-rate  should  give  the  Methodists  in  this  time  about  3,521. 
So  our  Methodist  friends,  with  their  matchless  zeal,  managed  to 
hold  nearly  one-half  the  children  born  in  their  homes.  Is  this 
"holding  our  own"  ? 

The  Presbyterians  increased  4,429  during  these  seven  years. 
Their  normal  birth-rate  should  have  given  them  an  increase  of 
5,684.  So  our  Presbyterian  friends,  with  their  enormous  wealth 
and  pre3tige,  peculiar  to  New  York  City,  massed  in  their  81 
churches,  managed  to  hold  about  two-thirds  of  the  children  born 
in  their  homes.    Is  this  "holding  our  own"  ? 

The  Lutherans,  with  14,000  members  in  1885,  show  an  actual 
decrease  in  roll  of  625.  Their  birth-rate  should  have  given  them 
3,920  increase.  They  have  not  only  failed  to  hold  their  own  chil- 
dren but  have  lost  625  of  the  older  ones.  Surely  this  is  holding 
our  own  with  a  vengeance. 

THE   LIVING   AND   THE  DEAD   ENEOLLED. 

But  these  figures  do  not  toll  all  the  pitiable  story.  Every  one 
knows  who  knows  anything  about  the  history  of  New  York 
churches  that  the  rolls  are  not  kept  to-day  as  they  were  twenty 
or  thirty  years  ago.  Then  church  enrollment  meant  a  pretty  ac- 
curate summary  of  the  members  on  the  field;  now  some  of  our 
churches  keep  even  the  dead  on  their  rolls,  on  the  ground  that 
their  establishment  extends  over  this  world  and  the  next!  One 
of  these  mushroom  records  collapsed  the  other  day  by  a  fire,  and 


THE  FACT  OF  THE  FAILURE.  15 

out  of  a  roll  of  over  4,000  there  could  not  be  found  200  members! 
This  is  undoubtedly  an  extreme  case,  but  it  is  to  the  point. 
There  are  actually  fewer  Baptists  in  New  York  to-day  than  there 
were  twenty  years  ago;  there  are  fewer  Methodists  than  there 
were  twenty  years  ago. 

CHTmCHES   AND  POPULATION. 

While  we  have  been  thus  holding  our  own  with  such  remark- 
able rigor,  what  has  the  population  of  New  York  City  beei> 
doing?  The  statistics  of  the  churches  and  the  population  teil 
the  sad  story.  These  records  of  churches  and  population  mean 
all  churches — Catholic  and  Protestant. 

1840—170  churches— 312,852  population— 1  to  1,840. 
^1892—569  churches— 1,801,739  population— 1  to  3,166. 

Apparently  we  had  1  church  to  1,840  people  in  the  year  1840. 
In  1892  we  had  held  our  own  to  the  extent  of  figuring  out  on 
paper  1  church  to  3,166  people!  I  say  figuring  out  on  paper  ad- 
visedly, for  this  record  of  churches  is  even  more  misleading  than 
the  record  of  members.  In  1840  it  was  the  policy  of  the  Baptist 
churches,  for  example,  to  aim  at  the  establishment  only  of  vigor- 
ous self-supporting  bodies,  and,  as  a  rule,  the  record  of  a  church 
meant  something.  Now  what  are  the  facts?  The  Baptists  re- 
port 51  churches  in  New  York  in  1894.  I  am  personally  acquaint- 
ed with  the  history  and  present  condition  of  every  one  of  these 
so-called  churches.  To  my  certain  knowledge  24  of  these  51  re- 
corded "Churches"  merely  represent  aspiration,  not  attainment. 
They  are  utterly  insignificant  in  membership,  position,  property 
or  influence  in  the  community.  Some  of  them  are,  in  fact,  mis- 
sion stations  for  reaching  our  foreign  population,  and  many  of 
them  are  not  able  to  pay  for  heating  and  lighting,  and  sweeping 
out  their  places  of  worship.  This  incapacity  has  been  long 
chronic  in  many  cases.  If  the  record  of  Protestant  Churches 
were  made  on  the  principles  that  entered  into  the  definition  of  a 
"church"  in  1840,  the  statistics  of  1892  would  show  we  actually 


16  THE  FACT  OF  THE  FAILURE. 

have  in  New  York  to-day  1  church  to  about  6,000  inhabitants,  as 
contrasted  with  1  to  1840,  forty-five  years  ago.  Nor  does  all  this 
tell  the  story  of  the  actual  condition  of  the  people  and  the  church- 
es in  New  York.  Almost  all  our  large  and  vigorous  churches  are 
jammed  in  the  rich  and  sparsely  settled  districts  of  the  city, 
where  churches  of  any  sort  are  least  needed,  while  the  dark 
teeming  millions  in  the  crowded  districts  are  untouched  by  the 
remotest  influence  from  church  life.  Broome  Street  Tabernacle 
is  a  mission  station  of  the  New  York  City  Mission  and  Tract 
Society  and  is  (supported  by  that  Society.  It  is  the  only  Protes- 
tant Church  in  the  midst  of  a  population  of  over  60,000.  There 
are  districts  in  New  York  of  50,000  inhabitants  in  which  there 
is  not  found  a  single  church  of  any  sort.  It  is  a  conservative  es- 
timate that  places  the  number  of  heathen  in  New  York  at  500,- 
000. 

WHERE   AEE   THE   MEN? 

The  Federal  Census  of  1890  gives  135,000  Protestant  commu- 
nicants in  New  York.  Probably  twenty-five  per  cent,  or  about 
33,000  of  them  are  men.  Out  of  a  male  population  of  900.000,  a 
little  over  three  per  cent,  are  Protestants.  A  vote  that  amouutis 
to  only  three  per  cent,  of  a  total  poll  is  generally  called  scatter- 
ing, and  need  not  be  considered!  Besides,  these  people  entered 
as  Protestants  in  the  Census,  do  not  all  of  them  go  to  church.  I 
have  counted  the  people  present  at  a  regular  afternoon  preach- 
ing service  on  a  beautiful  day  in  the  largest  Presbyterian  church 
in  the  city,  with  a  roll  of  2,499  members  and  pews  for  1,600  peo- 
ple— and  there  were  just  425  people  present!  Probably,  at  the 
morning  service,  there  were  850  present,  but  I  greatly  doubt  it. 
In  a  prosperous,  self-supporting  Protestant  church  in  New  York, 
the  congregation  will  generally  average  only  forty  per  cent,  of 
the  church  roll  at  the  best  service  when  the  pastor  is  in  his  pul- 
pit. There  are,  therefore,  never  more  than  16,000  men  to  be 
found  in  the  451  Protestant  churches  in  New  York  on  the  fair- 
est day  and  under  the  very  best  conditions.  The  rest  of  the  people 


THE  FACT  OF  THE  FAILUBE.  17 

are  women  and  children.  Where  are  the  900,000  men  of  New  York 
on  Sunday  ?  They  may  be  in  the  parks,  they  may  be  at  Coney 
Island,  they  may  lounge  in  the  clubs  or  go  a-fishing;  but,  wher- 
ever they  are,  they  are  rarely  found  crowding  Protestant  church- 
es. There  are  500  clubs  and  over  1,000  lodges  in  New  York,  and 
not  a  woman  in  them!  Masonry  alone  counts  20,000  stalwart 
men  in  New  York  City. 

THE   MILLIONS   INVESTED. 

Let  us  look  at  it  from  another  point  of  view — that  of  the  in- 
vested capital  and  results.  Methodism,  undoubtedly,  forms  the 
most  aggressive  wing  of  Protestantism  to-day  in  the  New  World. 
Last  year  the  New  York  Conference  West  (including  several 
strong  suburban  churches)  reported  17,309  members  in  86  church- 
es. They  gave  to  their  work  $550,000,  and  on  an  invested  capi- 
tal of  $4,100,000  they  gained  net  241  members!  Their  birth-rate 
should  have  given  them  692  new  members,  could  they  only  suc- 
ceed in  holding  their  children.  Think  of  it!  An  army  of  17,309  sol- 
diers massed  in  86  divisions,  spend  $550,000  in  a  working  capital 
on  $4,100,000  investment  and  manage  to  save  to  their  faith  one- 
third  of  their  own  children.  And  they  are  supposed  to  be  in  a 
field  campaign  conquering  the  world.  If  an  ordinary  business 
man  at  the  end  of  the  year  were  confronted  with  such  results  in 
the  conduct  of  his  trade — he  would  do  one  of  two  things — speed- 
ily change  his  methods,  or  call  in  the  sheriff  and  sell  out  the 
whole  thing  as  junk!  The  Baptists  in  the  Southern  New  York 
Association,  including  several  powerful  suburban  churches,  re- 
ported in  1894,  18,604  members.  During  the  four  years  from 
1891  to  1894  they  gave  on  an  average  $500,000  annually,  an  ag- 
gregate of  $2,000,000  in  these  four  years.  They  have  68  church- 
es and  their  property  in  worth  $4,000,000.  From  '91  to  '94  they 
spent  $2,000,000  in  a  working  capital  on  $4,000,000  invested  and  . 
managed  to  gain  216  members  annually.  Their  birth  rate  was 
744  annually.  How  long  will  it  take  the  Baptists  at  this  rate  to 
conquer  the  woyld  ? 


18  THE  FACT  OF  THE  FAILUBE. 

The  Presbyterians  in  New  York  give  annually  at  least  $1,000,- 
000.  Their  property  is  worth  over  $8,000,000  and  they  average 
a  gain  of  632  annually.  Is  this  all?  No!  American  Presbyte- 
rianism  with  its  enormous  wealth  and  established  power  has 
done  one  more  thing  for  the  cause  of  Christianity  in  New  York — 
expelled  from  the  pulpit  Prof.  Charles  A.  Briggs,  the  foremost 
scholar  of  the  Church  of  Christ  in  the  New  World.  Truly  this 
is  progress. 

DESERTS   OF   EMPTY   PEWS. 

What  is  the  character  of  the  average  attendance  on  Protest- 
ant church  services  in  New  York  ?  The  plain  fact  is  Protestant- 
ism has  little  hold  on  the  manhood  of  New  York.  The  men  have 
deserted  the  churches  and  built  clubs  and  secret  societies  in  their 
stead.  The  attendance  on  the  average  smaller  churches  that 
cannot  command  preachers  of  great  personal  powers  is  simply 
beneath  contempt.  I  shall  never  forget  my  first  experience  in  a 
great  city  church.  I  was  fresh  from  the  far-off  South,  full  of 
fire  and  zeal.  I  knew  the  church  building  had  a  capicity  of  1,- 
500  and  that  they  had  1,600  members.  My  own  little  village 
church  barely  held  400.  I  dreamed  of  a  sea  of  eager  living  faces. 
I  trusted  to  the  inspiration  of  the  hour  to  give  me  my  best 
thought.  The  eventful  morning  of  my  life  came.  Shall  I  ever 
forget  it?  I  sat  down  shivering  in  the  pulpit,the  blood  in  my  veins 
fairly  frozen  at  the  sight  before  me — ^a  desert  of  empty  benches 
Avith  just  80  human  beings  scattered  among  them.  I  stumbled 
through  the  service  somehow.  I  tried  to  preach  but  I  could  not. 
The  sight  of  that  silent  and  solemn  mausoleum,  and  those  prim 
elderly  women  and  a  few  fidgety  old  men  looking  up  at  me  from 
their  lonely  perches  took  all  the  soul  out  of  me.  I  made  the  most 
stupid  failure  of  my  life.  It  makes  me  shiver  to  think  of  that 
December  morning  now.  This  is  no  exceptional  case.  It  has 
long  been  the  rule  in  the  average  Protestant  church  in  lower  New 
York.  Dr.  Shauffler,  the  veteran  mission  worker  of  the  city 
made,  from  the  platform  of  Ghickering  Hall  some  time  ago,  the 


THE  FACT  OF  THE  FAILURE.  19 

following  statement:  "I  made  the  rounds  some  time  ago  on  a 
beautiful  Sunday  morning  in  some  of  these  churches,  and  some 
of  them  fairly  large — and  this  was  the  count:  in  four  churches 
there  was  one  with  126  people,  another  35,  another  25,  and  anoth- 
er 110.  If  anybody  tells  you  that  he  estimates  that  in  his  church 
there  are  500  in  the  congregation  you  can  cut  him  down  50  per 
cent,  and  you  will  be  about  right.  The  next  Sunday  was  a  beau- 
tiful Sunday  and  I  went  forth  once  more  to  count  the  people,  and 
I  found  them.  In  4  churches — there  were  55  in  one,  45,  28,  and 
in  another  26,  and  a  bright  Sunday  morning  it  was  too." 

A  man  said  to  another,  in  New  York,  one  day:  "How  do  you 
account  for  the  small  attendance  on  the  Protestant  churches?" 

"I  can't  account  for  it  at  all,"  replied  his  friend.  "I  went  to 
one  of  them  the  other  night  myself,  and  for  the  life  of  me  I 
couldn't  make  out  what  under  heaven  brought  as  ma,ny  people 
there  as  1  saw.    It's  too  much  for  me,  I  can't  understand  it." 

SACRED   EEFEIGEEATOKS. 

Not  only  is  the  average  service  of  the  average  Protestant 
church,  as  at  present  conducted  in  New  York,  inexpressibly  dull, 
but  the  religious  fibre  of  the  stronger  ones  is  unquestionably 
tough.  It  is  the  almost  universal  experience  of  young  people 
who  come  into  New  York  from  the  country  that  they  are  chilled 
to  the  marrow  of  their  bones  by  their  first  contact  with  our 
church  life.  They  rarely  recover  their  spiritual  equilibrium  after 
this  first  disillusion. 

They  desert  the  churches  of  their  childhood,  and  join  the  great 
church  outside  of  the  Church  that  grows  faster  with  each  suc- 
ceeding generation.  The  plain  truth  is,  fashion  and  pride  and 
wealth,  and  social  caste,  for  their  own  sake,  dominate  our 
strongest  churches.  The  best  attended  of  these  great  churches 
are  crowded  simply  by  the  social  attraction  of  the  wealthy  fami- 
lies who  rule  them.  To  keep  out  the  herd  of  vulgar,  social  aspi- 
rants who  wish  to  scrape  acquaintance  by  jostling  the  children 
of  the  rich,  some  of  these  churches  have  separate  Sunday-schools 


20  THE  FACT  OF  THE  FAILUBE. 

for  the  rich  and  the  poor.  Really  we  cannot  blame  them  in  view 
of  the  evident  motive  of  this  mob.  And  yet,  is  this  Christianity? 
A  pastor  was  recently  driven  out  of  a  fashionable  church  for 
two  reasons.  First,  they  said  he  was  not  an  orator.  Second, 
they  said  he  gave  too  much  time  to  the  poor!  "Has  the  Messiah 
come,  or  shall  we  look  for  another?"  What  answer  could  these 
people  give  to  the  Disciples  of  John,  if  they  should  come  to-day 
seeking  the  sign  of  their  discipleship  of  Jesus? 

THE   PEOPHETS   DEAD. 

New  York  is  the  largest  graveyard  of  Protestant  preachers  in 
America.  Toward  the  dazzling  light  of  its  metropolitan  life  they 
flock  from  the  smaller  cities.  Against  its  adamantine  surface 
they  dash  their  brains  out  like  bewildered  birds  around  a  light- 
house. New  York  kills  more  preachers  than  any  city  in  Ameri- 
ca. They  start  off  well  and  work  well  for  a  few  months,  per- 
haps a  year  or  so,  and  then  they  quietly  die.  They  may  still  fill 
their  pulpits  and  deceive  the  census  taker  and  be  rated  among 
the  living.  But  God  knows  they  are  dead,  and  man  has  ceased 
to  care  one  way  or  the  other.  A  prophetic,  authoritative  minis- 
try has  all  but  ceased  to  exist  in  New  York. 

THE   SMUG   NEW   YOKKEE. 

The  pew  dominates  the  pulpit.  Such  is  the  age  of  the  Scribe 
and  Pharisee.  A  prophet  cannot  grow  under  such  a  blight.  The 
noblest  prophetic  instincts  of  the  Protestant  ministry  have  been 
strangled.  They  wear  collars.  They  choke.  When  you  pass  the 
door  you  do  not  hear  the  clear  ring  of  a  prophet's  voice.  You 
merely  hear  a  wheeze. 

Rural  enthusiasms  are  soon  crushed  beneath  the  cold  sarcasm 
of  self-satisfied  New  Yorkism  in  the  pews.  Of  all  the  forces  I 
have  ever  encountered,  this  is  the  most  stupefying.  I  know  what 
the  ignorance  of  the  South  is — it  is  my  own  fair,  native  laud. 
I  have  lived  in  Boston,  and  know  what  the  sullen  traditionalism 
of  New  England  means,  with  its  bulldog  tenacity.    I  have  travel- 


THE  FACT  OF  THE  FAIL  UBS!.  21 

led  West,  and  measured  the  boundless  cheek  of  the  typical  West- 
erner, but  for  downright  stupidity,  for  smug  self-satisfaction, 
for  hopeless  incapacity  in  the  world  of  morals  and  spirituality,  I 
have  encountered  nothing  on  this  earth  that  compares  to  the 
average  half-well-to-do  New  Yorker.  He  has  little  brains,  no 
culture — scarcely  the  rudiments  of  common  sense — but  being  a 
New  Yorker,  he  assumes  everj^thing!  Of  this  big  world  outside 
the  Bowery,  Fifth  Avenue,  Coney  Island  and  Central  Park,  he 
•knows  nothing,  for  he  neither  reads  nor  travels;  and  yet,  without 
a  moment's  hesitation  he  sits  in  instant  judgment  upon  the  world 
movements  of  human  thought  and  society.  These  are  the  men 
who  are  ruling  the  Protestant  churches  in  New  York — the  big 
little  men  who  hold  the  offices  and  dictate  its  methods  and 
politics. 

A  few  years  ago  a  country  Congressman  in  Washington  was 
holding  a  most  dignified  conversation  with  one  of  his  constitu- 
ents. While  talking,  a  careworn  elderly  looking  man  approached 
and  asked  the  Congressman  for  a  few  moments  of  his  valuable 
time.  With  evident  annoyance  he  stepped  aside.  Upon  return- 
ing he  said  with  lofty  scorn  to  his  constituent:  "What  do  you 
suppose  that  old  fool  is  worrying  the  life  out  of  me  about?  He 
wants  me  to  use  my  influence  to  induce  Congress  to  stretch  a 
wire  from  Washington  to  Baltimore  so  that  one  fool  over  there 
can  talk  forty  miles  to  a  fool  here!"  And  with  infinite  scorn  this 
great  man  gazed  after  the  retreating  figure  of  Morse,  the  invent- 
or of  the  telegraph.  Such  is  the  chronic  attitude  of  the  New 
York  Protestant  pew  toward  the  prophet  who  dares  to  speak  a 
real  message.    And  so  a  dead  past  rules  us  in  the  living  present. 

SICK   MEN   AND   SICK   SOULS. 

When  George  Washington  was  stricken  with  pneumonia,  his 
secretary,Tobias  Lear,says  that  the  overseer  was  summoned, who 
took  a  half-pint  of  blood  from  him.  Mixtures  of  molasses,  vin- 
egar and  butter  were  given,  but  to  no  effect.  Gargles  of  sage-tea 
and  bandages  of  flannel  about  his  throat  proved  equally  useless. 


22  THE  FACT  OF  IBE  FAILtlMK 

A  physician  arrived,  bled  Mm  again,  and  ordered  the  same  gar- 
gle, which  "produced  great  distress  and  suffocation." 

Another  physician  arrived  and  bled  him  again,  administering 
drugs  which  also  seemed  still  more  to  weaken  the  patient.  Find- 
ing that  the  general  was  rapidly  sinking,  and  feeling  that  the 
country  would  hold  them  responsible  for  the  care  of  his  life,  the 
alarmed  physicians  consulted  anxiously,  and,  as  a  last  resort, 
bled  him  once  more.  Washington,  feeling  himself  to  be  dying, 
sent  for  his  will,  gave  directions  concerning  his  papers,  military 
records  and  the  disposal  of  his  body,  and  then  prepared  himself 
for  death  with  the  calmness  of  a  stoic.  "The  physicians  were 
absorbed  in  grief." 

The  poorest  tramp  who  falls  in  an  almhouse  to-day  has  better 
attention.  He  commands  the  results  of  the  knowledge  of  centu- 
ries. But  for  the  sick  in  soul  to-day,  we  insist  on  the  same  meth- 
ods used  by  our  forefathers  hundreds  of  years  ago.  And  we 
wonder  why  we  fail.  And  in  our  bewilderment  we  become 
apostles  of  the  gospel  of  geography.  When  we  fail,  we  move 
up-town.  When  the  town  moves  further  up,  we  move  again. 
Our  apologists  say  that  the  people  have  moved.  And  yet  we 
look  to  the  east,  to  the  west,  to  the  north  and  to  the  south,  and 
as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach  rolls  the  sea  of  human  life. 

When  the  coroner  brings  in  the  true  verdict  on  these  dead 
churches,  it  will  be  this:  "Drowned  in  an  ocean  of  humanity, 
hunting  for  men." 

Protestantism  counts  less  than  35,000  men  in  1,800,000  popula- 
tion in  New  York.  Add  to  this  100,000  women  and  you  have  the 
total  results  of  a  century  of  toil  and  struggle  and  sacrifice. 

Our  invested  capital  is  over  '$160,000,000;  our  annual  gifts  of 
money  aggregate  over  $4,000,000  and  we  cannot  hold  the  children 
born  in  our  homos.    Is  this  success  or  failure? 


CHAPTER    II. 
Dismantled  Churches  and  Deserted  Thousands. 

The  supreme  test  of  any  religion  is  not  so  much  its  number  of 
adherents  and  temples  as  its  power  to  save  the  people.  Its  claims 
of  authority  are  a  hollow  mocking  upon  their  very  face  if  made 
amid  squalor  and  hunger,  rags  and  pauperism, crime  and  despair. 
Confronted  by  this  supreme  crisis  in  New  York,  Protestantism 
has  taken  to  its  heels  and  fled  up-town.  One  by  one  every  in- 
fluehftial  church  in  the  once  prosperous  down-town  communities 
has  given  up  the  struggle  and  become  apostles  of  the  gospel  of 
geography.  As  the  mob  follow  them  they  move  again,  until  they 
find  breathing  space  at  last  amid  the  vacant  lots,  scattered  pala- 
ces and  browsing  goats  of  the  upper  West  Side.  One  of  the  his- 
toric churches  of  the  Protestant  denomination  that  stood  near 
the  Academy  of  Music  has  been  demolished  and  a  business  build- 
ing erected  in  its  stead.  And  another  that  stood  opposite  has 
just  been  sold  and  converted  into  a  beer  garden.  One  of  the 
largest  and  strongest  churches  of  the  Presbyterian  denomina- 
tion on  Fourteenth  Street  has  sold  their  church  edifice  and  mov- 
ed up-town.  An  historic  church  of  another  denomination,  with 
a  pastor  whose  name  has  been  historic  for  twenty  years,  is  now 
on  the  market,  and  its  trustees  ask  $1,000,000  for  the  lot.  Where 
the  vacant  church  on  Fourteenth  Street  stands,  to-day  surges 
such  a  tide  of  humanity  as  never  surged  before  it  since  the  day 
its  foundation  stone  was  laid.  People  gone!  They  have  not 
gone;  they  have  come.  They  have  come  in  such  numbers  and 
with  such  problems — such  questions,  that  churches  have  taken 
fright  and  fled  before  this  flood,  this  avalanche,  that  threatens 
to  engulf  weakness  and  humbug  Christianity! 

The  life  of  the  down-town  masses  of  the  city  is  the  strategetic 
point  in  the  battle  of  Christianity  with  the  modern  world. 


24  DISMANTLED  CHURCBES,  ETC. 

Here  is  the  supreme  test  of  the  genuineness  of  our  discipleship 
of  Christ: 

It  is  the  disposition  and  power  to  save  the  lost  and  weak  and 
helpless.  John  sent  from  prison  to  Christ  to  know  in  his  condi- 
tion of  helplessness  whether  He  were  the  Christ  or  they  should 
expect  another.  Poor  disheartened  prophet!  Pioneer  and  fore- 
runner he  had  been  in  the  early  days,  crying,  "Prepare  the  way," 
and  now  overwhelmed  with  diflSculties,  imprisoned  and  deserted, 
his  life  haoiging  on  the  whim  of  a  harlot,  he  sent  to  Christ,  if  He 
were  the  Messiah,  to  give  him  some  sign  that  he  might  know 
that  his  hope  and  preaching  had  not  been  in  vain. 

What  was  the  ansM'er  of  Jesus  Christ?  He  did  not  say:  "Go 
back  to  John  and  tell  him  of  the  miracles  that  accompanied  my 
entrance  into  the  world;  that  the  star  stood  over  the  manger  in 
Bethlehem,  and  men  from  far  Eastern  worlds  saw  the  super- 
natural manifestation  and  moved  across  the  deserts  that  they 
might  stand  over  the  cradle  and  see  the  coming  Saviour;  that  the 
angels  came  down  from  God  and  said  to  the  shepherds  on  the 
hill  on  the  night  of  my  birth,  'Peace  on  earth,  good-will  to  men.'  " 
He  sent  back  this  message  to  John:  "Go,  tell  him  that  you  have 
seen  and  heard :  that  the  lame  walk,  the  blind  see,  the  lepers  are 
cleansed,  the  dead  are  raised,"  that  he  may  know  the  kingdom 
is  come — climax  of  all,  "that  the  Gospel  is  preached  to  the  poor, 
to  the  outcast  world;  He  will  know  then." 

OUT   OF   THE   THE   DITCH. 

I  stand  to-day  before  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  in  this  com- 
munity, and  in  every  modern  community,  and  say  it  must  an- 
swer that  supreme  test.  It  is  useless  to  prate  about  the  inspira- 
tion of  the  Bible,  or  this  or  that  doctrine,  if,  in  the  vital  strug- 
gle, in  the  hand-to-hand  conflict  with  sin  and  hell,  there  is  failure 
and  retreat  and  defeat.  The  supreme  test  of  Christianity  is 
found  in  its  power  to  reach  our  civilization  and  save  it;  reach  our 
life  and  bless  it,  lift  it  from  the  ditch  and  plant  it  on  the  heights. 
If  Christianity  cannot  answer  that  supreme  test,  it  has  failed  in 


DISMANTLED  CHURCHES,  ETC.  25 

the  one  hour  of  its  supreme  trial.  I  come  to-day  before  the 
Church  of  Christ  in  New  York  and  ask  that  solemn  test.  Does 
the  true  church  of  Christ  exist  in  New  York  to-day?  It  is  no 
use  to  say:  "See  our  sculptured  poems  in  marble  and  glittering 
spires.  See  our  magnificent  frescoes,  our  beautiful  pews." 
The  one  test  in  the  genuineness  of  the  discipleship  of  Christ  is: 
Have  you  reached;  are  you  saving  the  lost  and  lapsed  world? 
Have  the  poor  the  Gospel  preached  to  them  ?  Do  the  lame  walk  ? 
Are  the  blind  being  made  to  see?  If  not,  then  you  have  failed; 
then  you  are  failing  to-day. 

THICKEST   OF   THE  FIGHT. 

Here  around  you  surge  the  needy  millions  who  are  to  be  saved 
if  this  world  is  saved,  because  here  the  hosts  of  hell  are  mar- 
shaled, here  the  lost  are  marshaled,  and  Jesus  said  the  Son  of 
Man  came  to  seek  and  save  not  the  righteous,  but  that  which 
was  lost. 

Jesus  said  the  kingdom  of  heaven  was  like  unto  that  of  the 
lost  sheep;  to  the  woman  who  sought  diligently  the  one  coin  lost; 
like  the  feast  spread  and  the  seats  were  vacant,  and  He  said  to 
the  manager  of  the  feast,  "Go  out  into  the  highways  and  hedges 
and  compel  them  to  come  in.  Bring  in  the  poor  and  lame,  and 
halt  and  blind,  that  the  table  shall  be  filled."  The  church  that 
bundles  up  its  bag  and  baggage  and  flees  before  this  tide  of  hu- 
manity gives  up  the  struggle,  has  turned  its  back  on  the  commis- 
sion of  Jesus  Christ  and  on  the  Saviour  who  stood  beside  that 
dark  multitude  and  wept  as  He  looked  at  them,  scattered  as 
sheep  without  a  shepherd. 

NEW   YOKK   AND  LONDON. 

Around  the  doors  of  the  down-town  churches  surge  this  class 
of  people  of  which  Jesus  spoke  in  His  test  to  John. 

The  poor  are  here — poor  in  body  in  this  world's  goods;  the 
poor  in  mind,  and,  above  all,  the  poor  in  soul — poor  in  life.  New 
York  City  is  the  most  crowded  city  of  the  civilized  world.    Lon- 


26  BISMANTLED  CHUIiCHES,lETC. 

don  has  seven  people  to  a  house;  New  York  sixteen.  There  is 
no  crowded  district  of  all  the  civilized  world  in  which  property  is 
so  packed  and  so  intensified,  with  all  its  hideous  aspects  and  in 
so  wide  an  area  as  in  this  metropolitan  city  of  the  New  World, 
with  its  new  hope  and  new  life.  Here,  around  the  doors  of  your 
down-town  church,  you  find  the  thousands  of  laboring  people 
who  sweat  out  their  lives.  Needlewomen  who  sew  into  the 
coats  you  wear  their  hearts'  blood,  until  you  can  feel  the  throb 
of  aching  nerve  in  every  seam. 

The  poor  are  around  this  down-town  church,  crowded  in  dark 
and  dingy  tenements,  tier  piled  on  tier,  until  it  seems  as  if  the 
filthy  foundations  of  the  buildings  would  groan  at  the  burden  of 
woe  they  bear. 

JACOB   Ens's   EEPOKT. 

Here  are  the  districts  where  Mr.  Riis  found  twelve  men  and 
women  in  o)ie  room  thirteen  feet  square.  It  is  in  these  districts 
that  they  sleep  at  five  cents  a  spot,  on  the  floor,  on  a  table  or 
sheJf — anywhere  they  can  find  a  place.  It  is  in  this  district  that 
children  swarm  like  so  many  vermin.  Mr.  Riis  found  in  two 
buildings  136  children  in  two  dark  and  dingy  holes.  Death  stalks 
through  these  crowded  alleys  with  his  scythe  always  swinging. 
From  a  thousand  doors  in  summer  there  flutter  each  week  the 
white  ribbons  which  tell  of  broken  hearts  and  homes. 

Here  are  found  the  blind.  You  can  find  them  in  this  district 
staggering  from  those  saloons  whose  doors  swing  on  their  gilded 
hinges  every  day  in  the  year. 

In  no  district  of  the  city  is  the  curse  of  the  saloon,  with  its 
beautiful  surroundings,  its  music  and  companionship,  and  all 
that  degrades — in  no  district  is  its  curse  so  terrible  as  in  these 
districts  to  which  God  has  called  the  down-town  church  to  min- 
ister. Here  are  found  the  lame.  The  foreign  world  is  crowded 
here,  groping  in  its  blind  way  after  life,  not  able  to  read  the  sign- 
boards that  might  point  to  life,  the  easy  victim  of  every  darkened 
soul  that  seeks  to  destroy.    In  a  single  district  of  this  city  there 


DISMANTLED  CEURGHES,  ETC.  27 

are  111,000  people  crowded,  nearly  everyone  of  whom  are  foreign- 
ers, blind  in  finding  the  way  of  life. 

A    STERN   TEIBUNAIi. 

Think  you  that  with  them  will  perish  the  evil  they  have 
wrought?  No;  in  that  district,  with  111,000  crowded  souls,  there 
are  23,000  children.  I  think  of  the  hosts  that  press  the  pave- 
ments of  Cherry  Hill,  and  of  the  few  who  are  born  to  the  world 
on  the  heights  of  fashion,  and  I  look  into  the  faces  of  those  dirty 
urchins,  stained  with  mud,  and  their  hearts  stained  with  crime, 
and  it  seems  to  me  that  I  can  hear  the  step  of  a  coming  army 
whose  breathings  are  not  for  the  life  of  the  nation  or  of  the 
Church. 

I  hear  the  coming  tread  of  a  generation  of  men  who  not  only 
know  not  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ,  but  who  do  not  even  know 
the  name  of  the  government  in  which  they  were  born;  who  do 
not  know  the  flag  under  which  they  are  supposed  to  march  as 
citizens,  who  one  day  may  stand  before  a  staggering  State  and 
challenge  it  to  make  good  its  own  life  before  the  stern  tribunal 
of  the  guillotine,  the  dagger,  the  torch  and  the  dynamite  bomb! 
Those  children  growing  up  in  those  districts  without  Christ  or 
the  knowledge  of  truth,  or  the  influence  of  civilization,  cannot  be 
left  alone  with  impunity.  If  you  do  not  love  them  they  will  make 
you  look  after  them  to  save  your  own  life,  bye  and  bye. 

Lepers  there  are  around  the  doors  of  this  church.  The  out- 
casts of  society,  the  fallen  women  congregated  in  these  districts, 
whose  touch  is  pollution,  the  criminals  pouring  forth  in  renewed 
streams,  the  exil  influences  of  an  evil  life.  The  dead  are  here, 
men  dead  to  hope,  dead  to  life,  to  civilization,  to  honor,  to  all  the 
influences  that  make  life  worth  living  for  you  and  me. 

BLACK-WHEELED    GUNS. 

Those  marching  hosts  of  thousands  of  children  in  those  dis- 
tricts who  do  not  know  the  name  of  Christ,  will  have  a  settle- 
m'ent  with  you  and  the  State  in  the  future. 


28  DISMANTLED  CHURCHES,  ETC. 

In  your  midst  to-day,  there  is  a  population  of  50,000,  whose 
only  restraint  from  torch  and  knife  and  bomb,  is  the  fact  that  in 
your  armories  there  stand  black-wheeled  guns  that  can  be  drawn 
into  the  streets  and  sweep  them  with  grape  and  canister.  The 
only  power  to-day  that  stands  to  guard  your  life,  is  that  power 
which  is  itself  the  abrogation  of  civilization  and  the  inaugura- 
tion of  the  Reign  of  Terror  and  Death. 

Think  you  these  people  can  be  left  to  work  out  their  own  sal- 
vation? The  time  will  come  in  the  life  of  the  men  who  tear  up 
their  churches  and  move  them  to  the  grand  boulevards  of  the 
north,  when  a  heavy  hand  may  knock  at  their  barred  doors  and 
ask  of  them  the  reason  for  their  existence. 

MOAN   or   THE   GKEAT   SEA. 

Here  lie  the  lapsed  thousands  with  their  awful  needs.  Here 
rolls  that  dark  sea  of  human  want  and  woe  across  which  Jesus 
walked,  and  with  voice  of  love  cried,  "Peace  be  still."  And  shall 
they  who  bear  the  name  of  Jesus,  flee  before  that  moan  of  mis- 
ery that  breaks  to-day  on  the  shores  of  our  city?  The  church 
that  deserts  does  it  at  the  peril  of  its  life. 

If  the  gospel  fails  to  reach  and  save  these  people,  to  whom 
shall  they  go?  "Master,  thou  hast  the  word  of  eternal  life;  to 
whom  can  we  go?"  Their  daily  lot  is  a  poverty  that  means  hun- 
ger and  cold,  and  nakedness  and  rags.  It  is  this  shadow  that 
falls  across  the  streets  of  the  city  as  nowhere  else  on  the  earth 
to-day.  There  are  poor  people  in  the  country,  but  they  are  mil- 
lionaires in  all  that  constitutes  life  as  compared  with  the  poor 
of  the  city. 

It  is  a  continuous  amazement  to  me  that  people  should  leave 
the  country  and  crowd  into  the  city;  the  city  which  Carlyle 
graphically  described,  "The  great  foul  city,  rattling,  crawling, 
smoking,  stinking,  a  ghastly  heap  of  fermented  brickwork,  pour- 
ing out  poison  at  every  pore."  And  yet  they  come  in  tens,  in  hun- 
dreds, in  thousands,  in  tens  of  thousands  every  year,  crowding 
the  already  crowded  trades,  crowding  the  already  crowded  dens 


DISMANTLED  CHURCHES,  ETC.  29 

in  which  human  beings  whelp  and  stable  like  beasts.  They  leave 
clear  skies.  They  leave  pure  air.  They  leave  kindly  friends, 
sympathetic  neighbors.  They  leave  earth  for  hell,  and  still  they 
come.  Such  poverty  in  the  city  means  the  loss  of  a  home.  There 
is  no  home  life  among  the  poor  of  the  great  city.  The  word 
home  is  stricken  from  the  language  of  man.  The  poor  live  in  a 
den.  They  exist  in  a  tenement,  and  the  tenement  life,  with  its 
attendant  horrors,  is  constantly  O'n  the  increase  in  our  great 
cities.  In  New  York  City  it  has  swallowed  up  all  the  other  life 
practically.  The  tenement  has,  like  a  huge  monster,  devoured 
the  home. 

It  may  be  said  that  New  York  City  lives  in  the  tenements;  in 
the  second  and  third-class  tenements.  One  millio'n  three  hun- 
dred thousand  people  in  this  city  exist  in  second  and  third-class 
tenements.  This  constitutes  the  people.  The  landlords  are  an 
insignificant  faction.  People  who  live  in  separate  houses  are  not 
of  the  people;  they  are  the  exception.  To  every  so-called  house 
in  the  City  of  New  Y'ork  there  is  an  average  of  sixteen  dwellers. 
London  averages  seven.  In  what  is  known  as  the  tenement 
house  district  there  are  no  fewer  than  276,000  families  packed 
together.  In  this  quarter  it  goes  without  saying  that  the  death- 
rate  reaches  its  most  horrible  height,  and  public  morality  touches 
a  depth  of  degradation  before  which  philanthropists  stand 
aghast.  Such  poverty  is  the  open  door  to  theft  because  the  wages 
are  so  low  that  the  temptation  to  wrongdoing  is  well-nigh  re- 
sistless. How  hundreds  and  thousands  of  people  in  the  cities, 
with  their  wages,  can  keep  from  stealing  is  a  miracle.  A  man 
is  certainly  entitled  to  existence.  He  is  entitled  to  enough 
clothes  to  keep  him  from  freezing.  He  is  entitled  to  a  house  to 
cover  his  head,  and  he  has  a  right  to  work.  But  these  things 
are  denied  hundreds  and  thousands  of  people  to-day  in  the  city. 
A  woman  was  discovered  the  other  day  who  had  starved  to 
death.  Men  commit  crime  daily  that  they  may  get  the  comforts 
of  a  penitentiary,  the  luxury  of  a  stay  on  Blackwell's  Island. 
The  children  born  are  doomed  before  their  birth,  and  the  genera- 


30  DISMANTLED  CHURCHES,  ETC. 

tion  that  rises  has  less  of  hope  than  the  generation  that  dies. 
Our  statisticians  tell  us  that  20,000  children  work  in  the  great 
city  of  New  York;  but  those  who  know  the  facts  tell  us  that  in 
the  great  city  of  New  York  alone  there  are  100,000  little  pinched 
forms  that  work  for  their  daily  bread  and  are  glad  to  get  work 
— work  at  the  period  when  children  must  grow  or  die.  Their  lit- 
tle faces  are  pinched  and  shriveled  and  wrinkled  until  they  are 
an  army  of  little  men  and  women.  What  wonderful  creatures 
many  of  them  are!  They  never  complain — they  take  it  as  a  mat- 
ter of  course. 

There  are  60,000  of  these  little  waifs  drifting  on  the  black 
waters  of  this  city's  life,  and  every  city  has  its  proportion.  Is  it 
any  wonder  that  we  have  tramps  and  idlers,  and  that  the  gang 
of  toughs  is  soon  developed,  and  that  they  graduate  into  the 
hardened  criminal,  desperado,  highwayman  and  assassin? 

PANTS   SEVEN   CENTS   A   PAXR. 

Woman  is  the  mother  of  civilization  as  well  as  the  mother  of 
man.  Womanhood  is  the  index  to  life.  If  it  be  degraded,  life  is 
degraded.  If  it  is  steeped  in  sullen  despair,  life  will  show  its 
fruits.  If  it  be  hard,  life  will  be  hard.  If  the  life  of  woman  leads 
to  hell,  hell  is  nigh  to  humanity.  Two  hundred  and  fifty  thous- 
and women  work  at  hard  tasks  outside  of  domestic  service  in 
this  city.  Three  hundred  and  forty-three  trades  are  open  to 
women,  the  census-taker  tells  us.  They  are,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
simply  subdivisions  caused  by  the  divisions  of  labor.  Added  to 
this  is  the  additional  horror  of  unpaid  labor.  There  is  not  a 
single  one  of  these  lower  trades  in  which  women  work  in  which 
they  are  actually  paid  a  just  return  for  their  labor.  Because 
they  are  women,  they  are  made  to  do  the  work  which  men  could 
not  do  better,  for  from  one-third  to  one-half  the  remuneration 
men  would  receive. 

Needlewomen  make  pants  for  7  cents  a  pair,  and  use  their  own 
machines,  find  their  own  thread.  They  make  shirts  for  35  cents 
a  dozen,  and  find  their  own  thread  and  machines.    They  make 


DISMANTLED  CHURCHES,  ETC.  31 

gingham  waists  for  boys  at  2^/^  cents  each,  and  it  is  impossible 
to  make  more  than  a  dozen  in  14  hours  at  a  sewing-machine. 
And  14  hours  at  a  sewing-machine,  with  a  woman's  hands  and 
a  woman's  nerves,  means  that  life  is  being  ground  out  at  a  pace 
that  makes  the  thing  little  short  of  murder.  Cloakmakers  can 
earn  but  60  to  70  cents  a  day.  We  find  16  hours  of  toil,  unre- 
lieved by  a  single  gleam  of  light  or  hope  or  cheer,  and  the  net  re- 
sults of  this  concentrated  despair  and  misery  is  $3.50  a  week. 
And  half  of  this  is  taken  to  pay  for  the  den  in  which  the  work  is 
done.  Two  families  live  in  single  rooms.  Tw^elve  people  are 
found  sometimes  in  a  room  13  feet  square. 

Many  of  the  women  who  work  in  this  underworld  of  horror 
are  dying  to  hope,  and  when  woman,  with  her  ceaseless  passion 
of  life,  her  undying  love,  with  her  quenchless  heroism,  ceases  to 
hope,  it  is  time  for  your  preacher,  your  politician,  your  philoso- 
pher, to  hasten  to  find  the  cause. 

NO   USE   FOR    SOULS. 

One  of  this  army  of  a  quarter  of  a  million  women  recently  said 
to  Mrs.  Campbell: 

"I  don't  see  how  anybody  can  much  longer  keep  soul  and 
body  together." 

"We  don't,"  said  one  of  the  other  women,  turning  suddenly. 
'•I  got  rid  of  my  soul  long  ago,  such  as  it  was.  Who's  got  time 
to  think  about  souls,  grinding  away  here  fourteen  hours  a  day, 
to  turn  out  contract  goods?  Tain't  souls  that  count.  It's  bodies 
that  can  be  driven  and  half  starved,  and  driven  still,  till  they 
drop  in  their  tracks.  I  would  try  the  river  if  I  was  not  driving 
to  pay  a  doctor's  bill  for  my  three  that  went  with  the  fever.  Be- 
fore that  I  was  driving  to  put  food  into  their  mouths.  I  never 
owed  a  cent  to  no  man.  I  have  been  honest,  and  paid  as  I  went, 
and  done  a  good  turn  when  I  could.  Had  I  chosen  the  other 
thing  while  I  had  a  pretty  face  of  my  own,  I  would  have  had 
ease  and  comfort,  and  a  quick  death.    The  river's  the  best  place 


32  DISMANTLED  CHURCHES,  ETC. 

I'm  thinking,  for  them  that  wants  ease.  Such  a  life  as  this  is 
not  living." 

"She  don't  mean  it,"  the  tirst  speaker  said,  aipologetically, 
"she  knows  there  are  better  times  ahead." 

"Yes,  the  kind  you  will  find  in  the  next  room.  Take  a  look  in 
there,  and  then  tell  me  what  we  are  going  to  do." 

In  the  next  room  was  found  a  pantaloon  maker,  huddled  in  an 
old  shawl,  finishing  the  last  of  a  dozen,  which,  when  taken  back, 
would  give  her  money  for  fire  and  food.  She  had  been  ill  for 
three  days.  The  bed  was  an  old  mattress  on  a  dry  goods  box 
in  the  corner,  and  save  for  the  chair  on  which  she  sat  and  the 
stove,  the  room  was  empty. 

SIXTY  THOUSAND  HOMELESS. 

Do  not  believe  that  these  are  exceptional  cases.  They  are 
typical  specimens  from  the  army  of  this  dark  underworld.  There 
are  50,000  homeless  men  and  w^oinen  in  the  city  of  New  York 
alone,  an  army  of  50,000  that  do  not  know  where  they  will  lay 
their  heads  to  night.  The  other  day  a  man  in  a  fit  of  insanity 
murdered  his  wife  and  three  children.  How  do  we  know  it  was 
insanity?  They  say  he  became  a  maniac.  And  yet  the  poet 
tells  us  of  how  the  old  hero,  Virginius,  could  slay  his  child  rather 
than  see  her  dishonored.  Is  it  not  possible,  in  view  of  these  fre- 
quent horrors,  they  have  been  prompted  not  by  insanity,  but  by 
the  despair  of  love,  by  the  father  and  mother  that  stood  on  the 
brink  and  peered  over  the  awful  abyss,  and  preferred  to  kill  their 
own,  rather  than  to  deliver  them  to  the  hell  they  saw  open  be- 
fore them? 

Such  poverty  is  necessarily  the  mother  of  despair — despair 
grim  and  sullen  and  stupefying.  The  man  who  fights  with  hun- 
ger becomes  an  animal.  Is  it  not  better  to  die  a  man  than  to  die 
a  brute?  Can  these  desperate  people  reason?  Suicide  becomes 
a  luxury.  The  death  of  a  child  under  such  conditions  is  a  joy, 
not  a  sorrow.  They  are  gathered  to  the  potter's  field,  but  they 
rest.    They  are  crowded  one  on  top  of  the  other  in  the  big,  black 


DISMANTLED  CHURCHES,  ETC,  33 

trenches,  t)ut  they  will  not  be  roused  in  the  gray  twilight  of  the 
morning  to  dull,  ceaseless  toil.  Their  little  bodies  molder  to- 
gether in  the  grave,  but  their  little  stomachs  do  not  cry  for  bread, 
and  for  meat  and  for  drink.  Their  little  faces  do  not  grow  pinch- 
ed and  worn  any  longer.  There  are  some  things  worse  than 
death.  There  are  some  things  worse  than  the  potter's  field — it 
is  the  living  potter's  field,  the  living  death. 

THE   SUBMEEGED   SIXTH. 

In  1890  in  New  York  City,  there  were  36,679  deaths:  7,059  died 
in  the  hospitals,  insane  asylums  and  work-houses.  That  is  to 
say,  more  than  one  person  in  every  six  who  died  in  this  great 
city  died  in  a  public  institution,  and  nearly  4,000  of  those  who 
thus  died  were  thrown  in  the  potter's. field  for  burial.  Talk  about 
your  "submerged  tenth"!  This  is  the  "submerged  sixth"!  In 
1894  over  5,000  people  were  buried  in  the  potter's  field,  and  of  a 
total  death-roll  of  40,000,  over  10,000  died  in  hospitals,jails,  alms- 
houses, asylums  and  workhouses!    A  submerged  fourth! 

It  is  no  use  to  preach  hell  any  more  to  the  poor  people  of  New 
York.  They  hope  to  better  their  condition  in  the  next  world, 
whether  they  go  up  or  down.  Mrs.  Helen  Campbell,  who  has 
spent  her  life  among  the  poor  of  New  York,  says: 

"We  pack  the  poor  away  in  tenements  crowded  and  foul  be- 
yond anything  known  even  to  London,  whose  bitter  cry  is  less 
yours  than  ours.  And  we  have  taken  excellent  care  that  no  foot 
of  ground  shall  remain,  that  means  breathing  space  or  free  sport 
to  a  child,  or  any  green  growing  thing.  Grass  pushes  its  way 
here  and  there,  but  for  this  army  of  weary  workers  it  is  only 
something  they  may  lie  under,  never  upon. 

"There  is  no  pause  in  the  march.  As  one  and  another  drops 
out  the  gap  fills  instantly,  every  alley  and  byway  holding  unend- 
ing substitutes.  It  is  not  labor  that  profiteth,  for  body  and  soul 
are  alike  starved.  It  is  labor  in  its  basest  and  most  degrading 
form — labor  that  is  a  curse  and  never  a  blessing,  as  true  work 
may  be  and  is.    It  blinds  the  eyes;  it  steals  away  joy;  it  blunts 


84  DISMANTLED  CHUECEES,  ETC. 

all  power,  whether  of  hope  or  faith;  It  wrecks  the  body  and  it 
starves  the  soul;  it  is  waste  and  only  waste.  Nor  can  it  below 
ground  or  above  nold  fructifying  power  for  any  human  soul.  It 
is  as  student,  not  as  professional  philanthropist,  that  I  write, 
and  the  years  that  have  brought  experience,  have  also  brought 
a  conviction  sharpened  by  every  fresh  series  of  facts,  that  no 
words,  no  matter  what  power  of  fervor  may  lie  behind,  can  make 
plain  the  sorrow  of  the  poor." 

How  has  Protestantism  in  New  York  answered  this  awful 
cry  of  the  lame,  the  blind,  the  deaf,  the  dead?  By  deserting 
their  Gelds  one  by  one,  to  build  more  palatial  establishments  in 
the  favored  spots  among  the  houses  of  the  rich!  Is  this  success 
or  failure? 


CHAPTER    III. 

Protestantism  Becoming  a  Bourgeois  Aristocracy. 

The  masses  of  the  people  in  New  York  are  not  in  touch  with 
Protestant  church  life.  This  is  stating  the  case  in  its  mildest 
aspect.  It  would  be  nearer  the  whole  truth  to  say  that  the  mass- 
es of  the  people  are  either  alienated  or  hostile  to  our  present 
regime  of  Protestantism,  We  have  already  seen  by  the  study  of 
church  attendance,  church  membership  and  church  census  under 
the  National  Government  that  the  Protestant  churches  cut  an 
insignificant  figure  in  the  manhood  life  of  New  York. 

This  alienation  and  hostility  are  not  based  on  antagonism  to 
the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ.  A  crowd  of  workingmen  in  New 
York  have  within  the  past  decade  been  known  to  cheer  the  name 
of  Jesus,  and  hiss  the  name  of  the  church  almost  in  the  same 
moment.  The  opposition  to  the  church  is  because  of  its  present 
constitution  a;nd  ideal.  The  Protestant  churches  in  New  York 
to-day,  as  a  rule,  are  composed  too  exclusively  of  the  rich  and 
the  well  to-do.  A  man  shabbily  dressed,  without  credentials, 
would  be  rejected  as  an  applicant  for  membership,  whatever 
might  be  his  profession  or  religious  experience,  in  the  best  self- 
supporting  establishments.  The  question  of  membership  is  usu- 
ally settled  by  an  investigation  conducted  by  a  committee  whose 
business  it  is  to  investigate  the  man's  business,  his  standing,  his 
motives,  his  prospects  in  this  world,  and  his  hopes  for  the  next. 
This  is  done  under  the  idea  that  only  thus  can  the  Church  of 
God  be  protected  from  a  mob  of  imposters.  And  yet  the  rush 
has  not  begun  so  far  as  anybody  in  the  last  century  has  observed. 
This  committee  is  usually  composed  of  the  most  bigoted  men 
available,  and  under  its  withering  influence  people  are  being  con- 
stantly driven  from  the  doors  and  beyond  the  reach  of  oni 


36  A  BOURGEOIS  ARISTOCRACY. 

churches.  The  ideal  aimed  at  is  a  high-toued  social  club,  that 
shall  support  itself  in  handsome  style  for  the  benefit  of  its  con- 
stituent members  and  their  successors,  chosen  -with  due  care. 
The  tendency  of  the  church  is,  therefore,  steadily  and  persist- 
ently toward  the  creation  and  maintenance  of  a  bourgeois  aris- 
tocracy. This  is  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  the  failure  of  Pro- 
testantism in  New  York. 

THE    BBIGN    OF    THE   COMMON   PEOPLE. 

The  progress  of  the  world  is  steadily  and  rapidly  toward  de- 
mocracy. To-day  the  common  people  rule  the  world.  Emper- 
ors, kings,  presidents  and  elective  n.presentativos  hold  the  offi- 
ces, but  the  common  people  really  rule  already.  The  time  will 
soon  be  upon  the  world  when  they  will  rule  in  form  as  well  as  in 
fact.  Empires  are  to-day  but  the  dungheaps  out  of  which  re- 
publics grow.  The  French  empire  was  the  prelude  of  the  re- 
public. The  empire  of  Brazil  was  a  fiction  long  before  it  toppled 
at  the  breath  of  an  obscure  army  officer.  It  is  doubtful  if  Ger- 
many sees  a  successor  to  William  II.  The  monarchy  in  England 
is  purely  a  popular  fiction  perpetuated  by  the  historical  instincts 
of  the  English  people.  The  Queen  of  England  has  far  less  power 
than  the  President  of  the  United  States;  her  duties  are  purely 
ceremonial.  The  time  was  in  our  history  when  kings  and  princes 
filled  the  pages  of  human  history.  Now,  the  historian  writes  the 
record  of  the  life  of  the  common  people,  elese  it  is  not  considered 
a  history.  The  eyes  of  the  world  are  on  the  masses.  For  them 
the  scientist  toils  to  make  the  forces  of  nature  their  servants. 
Art  portrays  to-day  the  common  life  of  the  race  as  its  highest 
ideal.  Literature  once  fawned  at  the  feet  of  titled  fools.  Now, 
the  literature  of  the  race  is  abont  the  common  people,  and  it  is 
addressed  distinctly  to  them.  Wealth  even  has  felt  this  over- 
powering influence,  is  beginning  to  build  its  millions  into  popular 
colleges,  circulating  libraries, and  public  legacies  and  trusts.  The 
millionaire  who  dies  to-day,  holding  his  millions  as  his  own,  is 


A  BOURGEOIS  ARISTOCBACT.  37 

openly  hissed  while  he  lives,  and  boldly  and  publicly  cursed  while 
he  lies  cold  in  his  coffin. 

THE   ETHICAL  PUEPOSE    OF   HUMANITY. 

In  short  the  ethical  purpose  of  the  humanity  of  the  century  is 
fixed  upon  the  upliftins:  and  ennobling  of  the  masses.  This  i? 
precisely  the  purpose  of  Christianity.  It  always  has  been,  it 
always  must  be.  It  is  the  unfailing  evidence  of  the  presence  of 
the  true  church  of  Jesus.  Here  only  do  we  find  the  historic  con- 
tinuity of  Christianity  unbroken.  Where  is  the  machine  called 
the  Church  to-day,  and  what  is  it  about?  Is  its  supreme  purpose 
the  saving  of  this  dark,  vulgar  mass  of  humanity?  If  so,  it  is 
the  true  Church  of  Christ.  Otherwise  we  must  seek  the  histori- 
cal continuity  of  Christianity  outside  the  four  walls  of  the  insti- 
tution. In  short,  the  church  that  does  not  reach  the  common 
people,  whatever  it  is,  cannot  claim  to  be  Christian. 

Christianity  is  not  a  creed,  or  a  philosophy,  or  a  scheme  of 
ethics,  or  a  theory  about  the  universe.  Christianity  is  Jesus 
Christ.  It  is  founded  upon  His  unique  personality  as  the  incar- 
nation of  truth,  the  message  of  God  to  man  through  man.  This 
being  true,  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  that  has  the  right  to  His 
name  must  be  founded  on  His  personality.  Jesus  Himself  was 
of  the  common  people.  He  was  of  lowly  birth.  He  was  the  son 
of  the  carpenter.  His  childhood  was  passed  in  this  humble  home, 
with  its  lowly  surroundings.  He  was  bom  poor,  lived  and  died 
poor.  The  foxes  had  holes,  the  birds  of  the  air  nests,  but  He 
had  not  where  to  lay  His  head.  The  one  title  by  which  He  loved 
to  designate  Himself  was  not  the  Son  of  God,  but  the  Son  of 
man.  He  mingled  with  the  masses,  taught  among  them,  lived 
with  them,  lived  for  them,  died  for  them.  The  Pharisaic  and 
traditional  teacher  did  not  darken  the  home  of  the  poor  and  out- 
cast, but  the  news  passed  from  lip  to  lip  that  the  great  Galilean 
teacher  had  been  seen  in  the  humblest  homes,  and  the  accusa- 
tion was  brought  against  Him  that  He  ate  with  publicans  and 
ainners.    What  a  startling  contrast  is  this  figure  of  Jesus  with 


98  A  BOURGEOIS  ARlSTOCBACY. 

the  proud  Pharisee  of  his  day,  or  with  the  prouder  Pharisee  ot 
modern  times. 

WHY    JESUS   WEPT. 

The  miracles  of  .Tesus  were  all  miracles  of  mercy  wrought  for 
the  benefit  of  this  great,  helpless  mass.  We  are  told  that  He 
looked  out  upon  the  moving  thoasamds  as  they  thronged  about 
Him,  and  His  heart  was  moved  with  compassion.  He  was 
moved  to  tears  as  He  saw  them  scattered  as  sheep  without  a 
shepherd.  The  first  sermon  that  He  preached  was  from  thia 
text:  *'The  Lord  hath  anointed  Me  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the 
poor."  He  was  popular  with  the  masses  of  the  people.  They 
followed  Him,  they  thronged  Him,  and  His  enemies  did  not  dare 
molest  Him  during  the  three  years  of  His  ministry,  because  of 
their  fear  of  the  people.  Again  and  again  we  are  told  that  they 
did  not  lay  hands  on  Him  because  they  feared  the  people.  I 
would  like  to  know  if  anybody  in  New  York  would  hesitate  to 
lay  hands  on  the  average  preacher  for  fear  of  the  people?  Upon 
the  other  hand,  the  people,  as  a  rule,  would  gladly  aid  in  his  ar- 
rest and  persecution.  This  is  a  startling  fact,  but  it  is  a  fact. 
The  editors  of  certain  papers  in  New  York  understand  this  only 
too  well.  Their  choicest  rascality  is  to  slander  and  vilify  Pro- 
testant ministers.  The  reason  of  it  is,  that  the  average  Protes- 
tant minister  finds  no  sympathy  with  the  heart  of  the  masses  of 
the  people.  Hence  they  lie  and  slander,  and  vilify  with  the  ut- 
most impunity. 

WHY  THEY  OEUOIFIED   HIM. 

The  life  of  Jesus  wae  spent  in  the  supreme  work  of  minister- 
ing to  the  needs  and  aspirations,  the  weaknesses  and  the  sins  of 
this  dark  crowd.  As  he  passed  through  the  country,  men  small 
of  stature  climbed  into  trees,  that  they  might  see  Him  and  speah 
a  message  to  Him  as  He  passed.  The  crowds  thronged  Him  by 
the  'sea  until  it  was  necessary  to  push  out  into  a  boat  that  He 
might  have  room  to  speak  to  them.    He  stood  by  the  gates  of  the 


A  BOURGEOIS  ARISTOCRACY.  39 

city  and  bealed  the  sick  who  were  unable  to  find  a  physician. 
He  died  for  them  and  because  of  them.  His  final  arraignment 
of  the  Pharisees  was  the  cause  of  His  execution.  From  His  lips, 
gentle  with  a  thousand  messages  of  love,  there  poured  that  ter- 
rific arraignment  of  the  Scribe  and  Pharisee  as  hypocrites  and 
sons  of  hell.  His  words  cut  to  the  very  marrow  of  the  bone. 
They  could  not  forgive  Him.  Thoy  determined  to  use  all  their 
power  to  destroy  Him  and  they  succeeded  in  accomplishing  His 
downfall.  But  when  He  died  the  last  vestige  of  the  tradition- 
alism which  separated  the  people  from  the  God  of  the  people, 
was  destroyed.  The  veil  of  the  temple  was  rent  in  twain,  and 
the  holy  of  holies  laid  bare,  so  that  the  great  mnss  who  had  not 
dared  to  look  upon  the  shining  altar,  save  through  the  person  of 
the  high  priest,  were  now  invited  to  come  boldly  into  the  pres- 
ence of  their  father,  their  friend,  and  make  every  want,  every 
wish,  every  aspiration  known.  The  last  commission  of  Jesus 
Christ  was  worldwide.  The  doctrine  of  election  which  He  taught 
was  the  election  of  His  people  to  a  purpose,  and  that  purpose 
was  the  salvation  of  the  Avorld.  "Go,"  was  His  command,  "Go 
into  all  the  world,  preach  the  Gospel  to  the  whole  creation." 

ONLY   CLASS   NOT   A   CLASS. 

The  objective  of  Christianity  being  the  salvation  of  the  whole 
world,  it  is  impossible  to  construct  a  church  with  this  purpose 
that  does  not  reach,  and  seek  as  an  end  to  reach,  the  masses, 
eimply  because  the  history  of  the  masses  is  the  history  of  the 
world.  Outside  of  the  history  of  the  common  people,  there  if 
nothing  worth  relating.  They  are  not  a  class.  They  are  the 
people.  They  are  mankind.  They  are  the  only  so-called  class 
that  are  not  a  class.  The  history  of  a  state,  of  a  nation,  of  an 
age,  is  simply  the  story  of  the  life  of  the  common  people.  To 
reach  them  and  to  save  them  is  to  reach  and  save  the  world.  To 
fail  to  reach  them  is  to  lose  the  world.  In  this  dark,  vulgar 
mass  lies  the  destiny  of  the  race.  I  said  that  the  other  classes 
axe  as  nothing.    This  may  seem  an  exaggeration,  and  yet  it  is 


40  A  BOURGEOIS  ARISTOCRACY. 

not.  The  calculations  of  different  aistronomers  give  a  variation  of 
about  a  million  miles  in  distance  from  the  earth  to  the  sun,  and 
yet  this  variation  of  a  million  miles  is  so  insignificant  in  the  cal- 
culation of  the  movement  of  the  planets,  that  it  may  be  thrown 
aside  as  a  fraction  that  does  not  interfere  with  the  final  results, 
and  it  is  possible  to  calculate  the  time  of  an  eclipse  one  hundred 
years  from  to-day  with  either  one  of  these  computations  of  the 
sun's  distance.  So  in  the  history  of  mankind.  We  may  throw 
aside  a  few  million  people,  who  are  out  of  the  current  of  the 
great  masses,  as  unworthy  of  consideration  in  computing  the 
final  result.  In  the  arithmetic  of  the  universe,  a  million  men, 
more  or  less,  who  belong  to  a  special  class,  have  no  appreciable 
effect  in  the  grand  total  of  world  destinies. 

THE   DEEGS   AND   FEOTH   OF   LITE. 

Not  to  be  of  the  masses  is  to  be  out  of  touch  with  the  race.  1 
am  sorry  for  the  poor,  feeble-minded  man  who  is  anxious  to  trace 
his  ancestry  in  a  direction  that  avoids  the  great  stream  of  the 
race.  Human  society  constantly  sluffs  at  both  ends — the  dregs 
at  one  end,  the  froth  at  the  other.  The  upper  crust  is  as  much 
a  nuisance  in  its  way,  as  the  dregs  which  fall  to  the  bottom,  and 
the  man  who  aspires  to  be  of  the  froth  is  in  the  last  analysis  no 
better  than  he  who  supinely  sinks  with  the  dregs.  There  are 
many  who  aspire  mightily  to  enter  a  select  circle  of  so-called 
high  society.  And  yet  I  read  the  other  day  of  a  great  whiskered 
babe  in  this  charmed  circle,  who  was  thirty  summers  of  age,  and 
yet  such  a  baby  that  he  could  not  enter  upon  the  daring  work 
of  self-propagation  without  assistance.  All  the  world's  great 
men  have  come  from  the  masses  of  the  people.  There  is  not  a 
man  whose  name  is  worth  the  thought  of  the  world  for  an  hour 
who  did  not  come  from  the  masses.  We  readily  understand, 
therefore,  the  ideal  of  .Jesus  when  He  wrought  among  the  mass- 
es. He  sought  to  leaven  the  whole  human  race.  He  therefore 
planted  his  leaven  in  the  midst  of  the  lump.  It  was  not  an  acci- 
dent that  Jefiuis  Christ,  the  incarnate  Son  of  God,  was  the  son 


A  B0UROWI8  ARISTOCRACY.  4i 

of  a  carpenter.  It  was  not  a  blunder  of  God  Almighty  that  this 
thing  happened.  It  was  a  part  of  His  plan  of  world  redemption 
conceived  in  completeness  before  the  morning  of  creation.  To 
learn  thoroughly  this  secret  is  to  probe  to  the  depth  of  the  mis- 
sion of  Christ.  Here  His  Church  must  come  to  learn  the  ways 
by  which  it  is  to  reach  and  save  men.  When  with  open  hearts 
we  grasp  this  ministry  of  humility  in  the  incarnation,  we  have 
touched  the  inmost  secret  of  the  Heart  of  Christ  and  of  the 
Father, 

THE   PEOTESTANT   EPISCOPAL   CHUKCh's   LAST   OPPORTUNTTT. 

There  was  a  time  in  the  history  of  the  Episcopal  Churdh  when, 
if  its  leaders  had  had  the  breadth  of  heart  and  the  wisdom  and 
foresight  needed  for  the  hour,  they  could  have  made  the  Church 
of  England  the  Church  of  the  English  speaking  race  for  all  time; 
but  they  refused  to  understand  John  Wesley.  They  refused  to 
open  the  doors  of  the  church  that  it  might  receive  this  vulgar 
mass,  toward  whom  his  heart  went  out  in  undying  love  and  sym- 
pathy. The  Episcopal  Church  lost  here  an  opportunity  of  the 
ages.  The  question  now  arises,  what  church  will  have  the  wis- 
dom, the  foresight,  the  love,  to  readjust  itself  in  this  twentieth 
century  that  is  coming  to  the  world  needs  of  the  people?  The 
church  that  does  will  be  the  true  church  of  Christ,  and  in  His 
name  will  conquer. 

HEAVEN   THE   HOME   OF   THE   MASSES. 

Heaven  is  the  home  of  the  redeemed  millions.  The  Book  de- 
clares, "Straight  is  the  gate  and  narrow  is  the  way  that  leads  to 
heaven;  and  wide  is  the  gate  and  broad  the  way  that  leads  to 
destruction."  We  are  told  that  this  is  an  indication  that  few  will 
be  saved  and  many  lost.  Nothing  could  be  further  from  the 
truth.  Jesus  was  here  describing  the  condition  of  the  world  at 
the  moment  He  spoke.  He  had  no  earthly  reference  to  the  end 
of  time  and  the  final  results.  Hear  the  magnificent  shout  of  the 
Apocalyptic  seer  as  he  looked  at  the  end  of  time,  "And  I  saw  a 


42  A  BOUnaEOIS  ARISTOCRACY. 

great  multitude,  which  no  man  oould  number,  stretching  away 
from  the  throne  out  into  the  blue  of  heavens,  with  its  countless 
hosts  lost  amid  the  clouds;  from  every  nation,  and  every  race, 
and  every  country,  and  every  tribe,  and  every  tongue."  This  is 
the  glimpse  of  heaven  given  to  the  seer.  No,  if  you  wish  to  avoid 
the  crowd,  if  you  desire  to  keep  out  of  the  rush,  you  will  have 
to  go  to  the  other  place.  Hell  will  be  the  home  of  the  select  few. 
I  do  not  say  that  all  the  upper  ten  are  going  to  hell.  Far  from 
it.  But  I  do  say  that  many  of  this  circle,  as  now  constituted, 
are  certainly  in  a  fair  way  to  get  there;  and  I  am  sure  of  one 
thing,  that  the  man  who  is  uncomfortable  in  a  crowd  will  not 
find  heaven  to  his  taste. 

A   PEIVATE   PEW. 

I  was  talking  with  the  conductor  of  a  Pullman  car  on  my  way 
South  from  Washington  the  other  day,  and  this  conductor  told 
me  something  of  his  life.  He  said  that  some  years  ago  he  was  a 
desperate  young  man.  He  came  to  himself  and  realized  his  situ 
Bition  and  determined  that  he  would  be  a  better  man.  He  deter- 
mined to  find  the  truth  of  religion  and  walk  in  that  way.  When 
he  reached  Washington  he  sought  out  at  once  the  churcih  of  his 
father  and  mother  and  entered,  determining  in  his  heart  to  fiud 
the  light  if  he  could.  He  took  a  seat  in  the  dhurch,  and  he  said 
he  had  not  remained  more  than  a  few  minutes  when  an  usher 
came  up  and  said  to  him,  "You  cannot  sit  in  this  seat;  it  is  a 
private  pew  and  is  taken."  The  young  man  replied,  "Very  well, 
I  will  vacate  it  as  soon  as  the  owners  appear."  The  usher  re- 
plied: "No,  you  must  get  up  at  once.  We  do  not  allow  people 
to  occupy  the  pews  before  the  owners  appear."  "Well,"  said  the 
young  man,  "have  you  no  pews  for  visitors?"  "No,"  replied  the 
usher,  "the  seats  are  all  taken  by  regular  pewholders."  So,  ac- 
companied by  the  usher,  the  young  man  said  he  arose  and  march 
ed  down  the  aisle  and  out  of  the  church.  "And  when  I  reached 
the  lobby,"  said  he,  "I  turned  to  that  u«her  and  said,  *You  go  tjo 


A  BOURGEOIS  ABISTOCRACT.  48 

towv  preacher  and  tell  him  that  he  can  take  his  pulpit  and  his 
pews,  and  his  sexton  and  his  ushers  and  his  people  and  go  to 
hell.  I  will  never  cross  the  threshold  of  a  church  of  this  faith 
again  if  I  live  to  be  a  hundred  years  old.'  "  And  he  did  not, 
though  he  married  a  wife  who  was  a  member  of  that  church. 
He  sought  fellowship  with  another  denomination  with  open 
doors  and  became  the  teacher  of  a  large  class  of  noble  young 
men.  Where  there  is  one  church  with  this  spirit  outside  of  New 
York  you  find  two  in  New  York.  It  is  a  peculiarity  of  our  S)well 
metropolitan  church  life. 

I  do  not  say  that  such  churches  do  no  good.  Sometimes  they 
do  a  little  good.  I  heard  the  other  day  of  one  that  did.  A  wo- 
man had  tried  in  vain  for  years  to  get  her  husband  to  go  to 
church.  At  last  on  one  beautiful  Sabbath  morning  she  overper- 
suaded  him  and  he  went.  When  he  looked  around  in  church  and 
saw  how  much  more  handsomely  all  the  other  women  were 
dressed  than  his  own  wife,  he  was  cut  to  the  heart  as  he  looked 
at  her  shabby  clothes.  When  he  went  back  home  he  handed  her 
$500,  and  told  her  to  buy  some  clothes.  I  am  not  saying  that 
these  churches  are  utterly  sterile  of  good,  they  do  sometimes 
accomplish  such  results  and  they  are  to  be  commended  for  such 
good  works.  But  if  we  look  for  an  institution  here  whose  mis- 
sion is  to  lift  man  from  the  ditch  and  save  him,  we  shall  be  bit- 
terly disappointed. 

I  say,  therefore,  unhesitatingly  that  the  Christian  church  that 
does  not  seek  to  reach  the  masses  is  a  humbug.  It  reaches  no- 
body. It  is  a  caricature,  it  is  a  farce,  it  is  a  swindle.  In  my  soul 
of  souls  I  believe  it  is  a  stench  in  the  nostrils  of  the  Father  of 
humanity.  The  sooner  such  churches  are  torn  down  and  ground 
into  concrete  the  better — the  better  for  the  church,  the  better 
for  truth,  the  better  for  organic  religion,  the  better  for  man. 
Such  churches,  as  social  clubs  for  the  exchange  of  social  courte- 
sies, might  result  in  good,  but,  standing  as  the  pretended  em- 
bodiment of  the  regenerating  spirit  of  the  God,  they  cumber  the 
ground.    The  sooner  we  leaxn  this  the  better. 


44  A  BOURGEOIS  ABISTOCHACT. 

THE   SKELETON   HAND. 

Now  and  then  some  of  our  big  churches  have  a  spasm  of  high 
purpose.  What  is  the  result?  They  build  a  missiion.  That  is, 
they  build  a  kitchen  for  their  parlor  and  make  it  the  receptacle, 
as  far  as  possible,  of  the  disagreeable  elements  in  the  parent  es- 
tablishmeiut.  Or  they  declare  free  seats  for  an  evening  service 
which  none  of  their  members,  who  have  any  standing  in  the 
ehurdh  or  polite  society,  ever  attend.  Or  they  may  construct  a 
free  soup  house  on  a  back  street  somewhere.  Bah!  The  people 
who  are  not  paupers  and  loafers  spit  on  such  invitations  as  an 
insult.  They  are  an  insult.  The  strong  man  curses  them,  and 
the  timid  gives  them  a  wide  berth.  I  read  the  other  day  in  tihe 
"Youth's  Companion"  a  story  of  a  well  known  public  man  who 
is  remarkably  lean  and  lalmost  cadaverous.  He  was  in  the  back 
room  of  a  doctor's  office  one  day,  when  a  newsboy  opened  the 
door  and  shouted:  "Evening  paper?"  "No,"  said  the  doctor, 
"but  the  man  in  the  next  room  will  buy  one."  The  boy  turning 
the  knob  of  the  door  to  which  the  doctor  had  pointed,  opened  a 
closet  in  which  hung  a  huge  skeleton.  With  a  shriek  of  horror, 
he  dashed  out  into  the  entry  and  ran  down  the  stairs.  The  greajt 
man,  entering  the  room,  heard  of  the  doctor's  prank,  and  tihink- 
ing  it  a  mean  trick,  opened  the  window  and  told  the  boy  he  would 
buy  a  paper.  The  newsboy,  glancing  suspiciously  at  the  thin, 
bony  figure  in  the  window,  called  back:  "No,  you  don't!  You 
can't  fool  me,  if  you  have  got  your  clothes  on."  This  is  just  the 
feeling  that  comes  over  the  timid  w^hen  the  skeleton  hand  of  the 
soup  kitchen  edition  of  the  church  is  extended  to  them. 

An  aristocracy  may  have  had  its  mission  in  the  history  of  man, 
but  the  life  of  .Tesus  Christ  ushered  in  the  era  of  the  brotherhood 
of  man.  Christianity  is  the  organization  simply  of  this  brother- 
hv»od,  so  far  as  it  is  an  institution  at  all.  To  fail  to  grasp  this 
idea  is  to  totally  misconceive  the  purpose  of  Him  who  said  speci- 
fically, "Call  no  man  rabbi,  for  all  ye  are  brethren." 


CHAPTER    IV. 

The  Church  of  Christ  a  Democracy. 

Government  is  the  rock  on  which  all  Western  Christendom 
has  split.  Democracy  is  the  ultimate  principle  in  the  evolution 
of  government.  No  serious  student  of  human  history,  honest 
with  himself  and  honest  with  the  facts,  can  doubt  this.  Democ- 
racy therefore  must  be  the  goal  toward  which  all  government 
tends,  civil  or  ecclesiastical.  I  believe  this  because  I  am  a  Chris- 
tian. The  principles  of  democracy  are  fundamental  to  the  Chris- 
tian religion.  The  language  of  Jesus  Christ  is  on  this  point  di- 
rect. The  record  declares  that  He  called  His  Disciples  unto 
Him  and  said:  Ye  know  that  the  rulers  of  the  Gentiiles  lord  it 
over  them,  and  their  great  ones  exercise  authority  over  them. 
Not  so  shall  it  be  among  you:  but  whosoever  would  become  great 
a;mong  you  shall  become  your  minister,  and  whosoever  would  be 
first  among  you  shall  be  your  servant;  even  as  the  Son  of  Man 
came  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minister,  and  to  give  His 
life  a  ransom  for  many.  As  the  Father  hath  sent  Me  even  so 
send  I  you.  Be  not  ye  called  rabbi,  for  one  is  your  teacher,  and 
all  ye  are  brethren.  And  call  no  man  your  father  on  the  earth, 
for  one  is  your  Father  which  is  in  heaven.  Neither  be  ye  called 
masters,  for  one  is  your  Master,  even  the  Christ.  But  he  that  is 
greatest  among  you  shall  be  j^our  servant.  And  whosoever  shall 
exalt  himself  shall  be  humbled,  and  whosoever  shall  humble 
himself  shall  be  exalted. 

If  we  accept  the  New  Testament  as  the  authoritative  state- 
ment of  the  foundation,  we  must  believe  that  the  Church  of 
Jesus  Christ  is  a  pure  democracy,  the  grounds  of  whose  citizen- 
ship are  the  alienable  rights  of  a  common  brotherhood. 

I  believe  that  the  Church  of  Chnisit  in  its  truth  and  purity  will 
ultimately  conquer  the  world.    If  so  it  must  represent  in  its  goV' 


46  CHURCH  Ot  CHRIST  A    DEMOCRACY, 

erning  polity  the  principles  of  pure  democracy.  I  believe  that 
the  Ohurch  itself  is  simply  the  local  assembly  of  God's  people. 
I  believe  that  in  them  vests  the  inalienable  right  to  think  for 
themselves,  to  work  out  their  own  g-alvation,  to  worship  G^d 
according  to  the  dictates  of  their  own  conscience — that  is,  in 
spirit  and  in  truth. 

"The  Kingdom  of  God  cometh  not  with  observation."  says 
Christ.  That  is,  it  is  not  from  without.  It  is  not  a  temporal 
force.  He  did  not  claim  for  it  temporal  authority.  He  distinctly 
repudiated  every  effort  of  His  Disciples  to  set  up  a  temporal  au- 
thority, declaring  on  such  occasions,  "My  kingdom  is  not  of  this 
world,"  meaning  a  world  of  human  authority.  The  only  Church 
to  which  He  promised  special  power  was  the  local  assembly  of 
believers.  "Where  two  or  three  are  met  together,  there  am  I  in 
the  midst,  and  that  to  bless."  This  local  assembly  was  the  only 
Apostolic  Church  of  which  we  have  any  authentic  record. 

A  BOOK   SUPPEESSED. 

"The  Bampton  Lectures"  for  1888,  delivered  by  Edwin  Hatch, 
were  suppressed  in  England  by  authority.  These  lectures  were 
entitled,  "The  Organization  of  the  Early  Christian  Churches." 
The  reason  why  these  lectures  were  suppressed  was  because 
they  destroyed  the  foundations  on  which  certain  ecclesiastical 
authority  had  been  reared  in  modern  times.  The  more  thorough 
becomes  our  knowledge  of  the  ancient  church  the  more  simple 
becomes  its  organization,  and  the  less  pretense  we  have  for  our 
claim  to  any  temporal  authority  established  by  Christ.  The  only 
authority  recognized  by  Jesus  in  the  establishment  of  His 
Church  was  spiritual.  Here  He  gave  unlimited  power.  In  His 
promises  of  dominion  over  evil  the  faith  of  His  Disciples  was 
tested  to  its  supreme  limit.  Upon  every  occasion  that  His  Dis- 
ciples sought  the  exercise  of  temporal  authority  over  each  other 
or  over  others  they  met  with  a  rebuke  whose  emphasis  could  not 
be  misunderstood.  When  they  were  disputing  as  to  who  should 
be  the  first  in  the  knigdopi — meaning  the  temporal  kingdom  they 


CHURCH  OF  CHRIST  A  DEMOCRACY.  47 

supposed  Christ  about  to  establish — He  took  a  little  child  and 
put  it  in  the  midst  of  them,  and  told  them  that  unless  they  be- 
came as  little  children  they  themselves  could  have  no  part  in 
His  kingdom. 

POLITICS    AMONG  THE   APOSTLES. 

The  mother  of  the  sons  of  Zebedee  with  the  sons  came  to 
Jesus,  as  He  proceeds  to  Jerusalem  at  the  close  of  His  ministry, 
and  petitions  Him  to  clothe  her  children  with  authority  over  the 
other  disciples  and  over  His  kingdom.  If  Jesus  had  meant  to 
establish  any  sort  of  an  ecclesiastical,  authoritative  machine, 
here  was  certainly  the  hour  in  which  He  would  have  given  indi- 
cation of  that  fact.  If  such  had  been  His  intention,  this  petition 
was  not  unreasonable.  James  and  John  were  of  the  three  who 
stood  on  the  mount  with  Jesus  and  witnessed  His  transfigura- 
tion. They  were  among  the  favored  ones  of  the  twelve.  John 
was  the  disciple  specially  loved  by  Christ.  Yet  what  is  His  an- 
swer to  this  petition  ? 

In  the  midst  of  the  indignation  of  the  Disciples,  when  they 
had  heard  the  request.  He  calls  them  aside  and  delivers  to  them 
His  emphatic  message.  Said  Jesus:  "The  Gentiles  exercise 
temporal  authority  over  each  other.  They  lord  it  over  one 
another.  They  have  temporal  rulers  that  are  called  princes  and 
benefactors.  It  shall  not  be  so  with  you.  The  way  to  prefer- 
ment in  my  kingdom  is  the  way  of  the  cross,  is  the  way  of  sacri- 
fice, the  way  of  service.  If  any  man  would  be  first  let  him  be 
the  slave  of  others." 

NOT  TO   DOMINATE   BUT   TO   DIE. 

The  mission  of  Jesus  Christ  was  not  to  rule,  but  to  serve. 
"The  Sou  of  Man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto,  but  to  minis- 
ter." The  mission  of  Jesus  Christ  was  not  to  dominate,  but  to 
die,  "and  to  give  His  life  a  ransom  for  many."  Over  the  powers 
of  evil  in  things  spiritual  Christ's  gift  of  authority  was  simply 
boundless.    Upon  His  Church  He  bestowed  the  authority  spirit- 


48  CHURCH  OF  CHRIST  A    DEMOCRACY. 

ual  to  forgive  sins  through  the  proclamation  of  the  Gospel,  to 
bind  and  to  loose.  Here  His  Disciples'  faith  could  not  rise  to 
the  limit  of  their  privileges,  but  it  was  coaistantly  necessary  for 
Him  to  rebuke  their  aspirations  for  temporal  power,  wherein 
they  misunderstood  His  mission  on  earth. 

PAKENTAIi   AUTHOEITY. 

Democracy  is  the  only  form  of  Church  government  that  can 
possibly  be  harmonized  at  last  with  the  fundamental  truths 
taught  by  Jesus.  His  doctrine  of  God  calls  for  such  a  polity. 
He  came  to  reveal  God  as  the  Father  universal.  He  came  to 
declare  the  Father.  He  taught  the  world  to  pray  "Our  Father." 
The  authority  of  a  father  is  a  power  that  cannot  be  delegated. 
It  is  in  the  blood.  He  declared  the  government  of  God  to  be 
parental,  the  government  of  His  Church  to  be  parental,  with  the 
Parent  in  heaven,  the  family  on  earth  bound  together  by  the 
common  ties  of  an  equal  brotherhood.  His  doctrine  of  man  ne- 
cessitates the  acceptance  of  the  principles  of  free  government. 

A   CHILD   OF   THE   KING. 

Jesus  declared  man  to  be  a  child  of  God.  A  child  of  the  King 
in  whose  veins  flow  the  royal  blood  of  the  King.  Jesus  declared 
the  intrinsic  divinity  of  man  as  man  set  forth  his  immortal 
worth,  his  immortal  capacities,  his  immortal  destiny,  his  im- 
mortal rights.  He  came  to  die  not  for  kings  and  princes  and 
nobles  and  those  who  moved  in  the  high  circles  of  society — he 
died  for  man — man  in  the  ditch,  man  in  the  gutter,  man  in  the 
highway  robber,  man  in  every  grade  of  degradation  and  sin.  He 
declared  that  man  was  in  himself,  of  himself,  worthy  of  the  su- 
premest  sacrifice  of  God  in  love  on  his  behalf.  He  taught  the 
human  race — all  nations,  all  races,  all  kindred,  all  tribes,  all 
classes — to  look  up  into  the  heavens  and  to  say,  "Our  Father." 
When  He  taught  the  world  this  lesson  He  threw  around  the 
race  the  golden  chord  of  an  universal,  fraternal  bond.    He  pro- 


CHTTBCR  OF  CEBIST  A  DEMO CE ACT.  49 

iaimed  the  equality  of  man;  equality  in  fraternity.    He  declar- 
d  that  in  His  kingdom  there  should  be  no  lording  over  each 
>ther,  because  they  were  all  brethren.    Titles  and  class  distinc- 
tions He  declared  to  belong  to  the  unregenerate  world—the  world 
that  was  to  pass  away  and  bow  at  last  to  His  universal  empire. 

FIEST   CHURCH   SCANDAI;. 

The  ultimate  outcome  of  every  departure  from  the  basis  of 
fraternal  democracy  in  the  history  of  the  church  has  resulted  in 
evil  and  disgrace. 

The  first  church  scandal  in  sacred  history  before  the  death  of 
Christ,  was  this  disgraceful  attempt  of  certain  disciples  to  ob- 
tain temporal  authority  over  their  brethren. 

As  we  come  down  to  the  centuries  after  CJhrist,  we  find,  with- 
out an  exception,  that  the  darkest  pages  in  the  history  of  Chris- 
tianity have  been  those  on  which  men  have  written  the  history 
of  their  ambitions  for  power.  The  disgraces  of  church  history 
are  indelibly  traced  to  the  determination  of  men  to  rule  over 
their  fellow-men,  to  dictate  to  them  what  they  shall  believe,  and 
what  they  shall  do,  and  how  they  shall  worship  God. 

THTJMBSCEEW,  EACK,    TOECH. 

The  history  of  the  thumbscrew  is  the  history  of  this  daring 
assumption  of  power  which  Christ  denied  to  His  Church.  The 
history  of  the  wheel,  of  the  rack,  of  the  torch,  of  the  inquisition, 
of  the  massacres  that  disgraced  the  name  of  historic  Christi- 
anity, are  all  traceable  to  this  attempt  to  establish  within  the 
church  what  Jesus  distinctly  declared  should  not  enter  it.  The 
disgraceful  perversion  of  truth  in  the  sale  of  indulgences,  which 
led  in  the  Catholic  Church  to  the  Reformation,  is  directly  to  be 
traced  to  this  fundamental  error  of  delegated  authority  temporal 
on  earth. 

Here  we  find  the  stumbling-blocks  in  the  way  of  the  Church 
to-day  in  its  progress,  Catholic  as  well  as  Protestant.  The  stum- 
bling-blocks to-day  in  the  way  of  the  Protestant  church  we  finc( 


50  CHURCH  OF  CHRIST  A   DEMOCRACY. 

to  be  the  pitiful  squabbles  over  ecclesiastical  definitions,  pass- 
words and  authorities.  Whenever  the  church  sets  up  its  claim 
to  ecclesiastical  power  on  earth,  it  is  certain  to  reach  at  last  ab- 
surd lengths  that  lead  only  to  disgrace  and  the  perversion  of  the 
fundamental  principles  of  Christianity. 

A   PASS   TO   HEAVEN. 

A  curious  illustration  of  the  development  of  tbis  idea  of  au- 
thority was  recently  given  in  Russia,  and  we  are  still  in  the  Rus- 
sian stage  of  religion.  The  young  Gi;and  Duchess  Paul  recently 
died.  Before  the  coffin  was  closed,  the  metropolitan  put  a  writ- 
ten paper  in  the  right  hand  of  the  corpse,  which  read  as  follows: 
"We,  by  the  grace  of  God,  prelate  of  the  lioly  Russian  Church, 
write  this  to  our  master  and  friend,  St.  Peter,  the  gatekeeper  of 
the  I-.ord  Almighty.  We  announce  to  you  that  the  servant  of  the 
Lord,  her  imperial  highness,  the  Grand  Duchess  Paul,  has  finish- 
ed her  life  on  earth,  and  we  order  you  to  admit  her  into  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  without  delay,  for  we  have  absolved  all  her  sins 
and  granted  her  salvation.  You  will  obey  our  order  on  sight  of 
this  document,  which  we  put  into  her  hand."  The  grand  duchess 
was  buried  and  the  worms  destroyed  the  paper.  Where  is  the 
grand  duchess? 

THE    CEOSS   AND   DEMOCEACY 

iis  the  church  attains  its  true  work  and  position,  the  policy  of 
fraternal  democracy  must  become  more  and  more  its  working 
basis.  The  first  democracies  in  the  history  of  the  world  were 
built  on  the  principles  of  Christianity.  There  were  no  democ- 
racies before  Christ.  Greece  and  Rome  were  not  democracies. 
They  were  not  even  republics.  The  Grecian  world,  when  Greece 
ruled  the  world,  was  divided  into  two  classes — Greeks  and  bar- 
barians. The  barbarian  had  no  rights.  He  was  a  brute,  the 
beast  of  burden  for  the  oligarchy  that  called  Itself  Grecian. 
When  Rome  was  mistress  of  the  world  the  world  was  divided 
into  two  classes — Roman  citizens  and  slaves.    The  slaves  were 


CHURCH  OF  CHRIST  A  DEMOCRACY.  51 

butchered  for  the  Roman  populace.  It  remained  for  the  princi- 
ples of  Christianity  to  work  out  in  the  history  of  the  world  the 
first  democracies  we  have  ever  known.  The  history  of  the  cross 
has  been  the  centre  around  which  has  clustered  the  fight  for 
human  freedom.  The  cross  of  Jesus  Christ  has  been  the  ad- 
vance herald  of  liberty,  equality,  fraternity.  Wherever  the  prin- 
ciples of  Christianity  were  taught,  class  distinctions  were  under- 
mined at  their  very  foundation.  As  the  Kingdom  of  Christ  pro- 
gresses, all  such  artificial  distinctions  must  at  last  be  destroyed. 

TErCTMPHANT    DEMOCKACT. 

The  American  nation  pre-eminently  is  Christian  in  its  founda- 
tions. Its  Declaration  of  Independence  and  its  Constitutions  are 
but  paraphrases  of  the  principles  taught  by  Jesus  Christ,  and 
taught  by  Him  in  the  history  of  the  world.  Democracy  is  the 
first  manifest  destiny  of  the  world.  The  movement  of  the  race  to- 
wards this  ultimate  principle  of  government  is  resistless.  It  is 
a  race  movement.  It  is  an  age  movement.  It  is  a  movement 
limited,  however,  in  the  history  of  the  world,  to  the  bounds  of 
Christian  civilization.  The  world  has  no  history  outside  of 
Christian  civilization  to-day.  The  American  democracy  is  but 
little  over  a  hundred  years  old,  and  yet  witness  the  result!  liift 
your  eye  and  look  to  the  north,  the  south,  the  east,  the  west,  and 
to-day  there  remains  on  this  vast  continent  not  a  single  crowned 
head.  Crowns,  thrones,  scepters,  titles,  classes  are  doomed. 
They  belong  to  a  past  that  is  yielding  to  a  future  holding  in  its 
hands  the  dominating  principles  of  truth. 

THE   GOOD   IN   6LAVEBY. 

If  you  ask  the  question.  Has  not  the  assumption  of  authority 
by  men,  specially  qualified  as  kings  and  nobles  and  rulers,  been 
beneficial  to  men  in  the  history  of  the  world?  I  answer.  Yes- 
often  this  has  been  true.  Take  for  instance  the  institution  o* 
slavery.  Slavery  has  its  beneficent  aspect.  I  honestly  believp 
that  when  the  history  of  slavery  in  the  Southern  States  sh^.T.  cjf 


52  CHURCH  OF  CHRIST  A  DEMOCRACY. 

written  a  hundred  years  from  now,  when  passions  anof  prejudi- 
ces shall  have  passed  away,  the  historian  will  find  that  the  bene- 
ficent aspects  of  slavery  in  the  South  were  far  larger  than  the 
world  suspects  to-day.  The  South  lifted  the  African  from  the 
bondage  of  savagery  into  the  light  and  strength  of  Christian-civi- 
lization. He  lifted  him  at  a  bound  across  the  chasm  of  centu- 
ries. Yet  while  this  is  true,  I  thank  God  that  there  is  not  to-day 
the  clang  of  a  single  slave's  chain  on  this  continent.  Slavery 
may  have  had  its  beneficent  aspects,  but  democracy  is  the  desti- 
ny of  the  race,  because  all  men  are  bound  together  in  the  bonds 
of  fraternal  equality  Avith  one  common  Father  above. 

A   TEAGEDT   IN   TRADITION. 

Institutions  that  were  of  use  in  the  past  will  have  no  place  in 
the  history  of  the  future.  They  may  have  belonged  to  the  con- 
dition of  infancy  of  the  race,  but  have  no  part  in  the  story  of 
the  race's  manhood.  Out  in  Kansas  recently  there  lived  an  old 
grandfather  ninety  years  old,  with  his  son  and  granddaughter. 
The  granddaug-hter  was  taken  ill  with  the  grip.  The  old  grand- 
father had  been  a  physiician  in  his  time  in  an  Eastern  village. 
He  tried  all  his  mild  remedies  in  vain  and  finally  came  to  the 
conclusion  that  bleeding  was  necessary.  The  father  refused  to 
permit  the  experiment,  but  while  he  was  away  the  old  man  per- 
suaded the  girl  to  let  him  try  taking  a  little  blood  from  her  arm. 
In  his  feeble  hand  the  knife  slipped,  and  the  brachial  artery  was 
severed.  The  grandfather  tried  in  vain  to  stem  the  flow  of  blood. 
When  the  father  returned,  he  found  his  daughter  dead  and  his 
father  by  her  side  in  a  swoon.  The  poor  old  man  could  not  rally 
from  the  terrible  shock  and  soon  died.  The  old  doctor  may  have 
had  his  uses  once  with  his  lancet.  I  fear  his  real  usefulness  de- 
pended more  on  the  imagination  of  his  patient  than  on  the  real- 
ities of  good  in  his  remedies.  Whatever  may  have  been  his  uses 
in  the  past,  he  belongs  to  an  era  from  which  the  world,  as  the 
world  is  free,  is  delivered.  The  cry  "Back  to  the  old  paths!"  is 
the  feeble  rallying  call  of  a  reminiscent  senility. 


(mxmcnioF  cebist  a  [democracy.  bs 

The  church  must  either  lead  or  be  led  in  this  world  movement 
of  the  race.  We  are  now  in  the  first  years  of  the  reign  of  the 
common  people.  Power  has  been  gradually  descending  or  as- 
cending, as  you  may  like,  from  the  head  of  king  and  prince  and 
aristocrat,  until  the  crown  of  empire  rests  upon  the  head  of  the 
everyday  unit  of  society.  Science  bends  its  energy  toward  dis- 
covering the  secrets  of  nature  that  will  make  the  life  of  the  mass- 
es richer  and  better.  History  now  records  not  the  life  of  kings 
and  princes  and  armies,  but  tells  us  the  story  of  the  everyday 
life  of  the  common  people.  The  eyes  of  the  world  are  on  the  great 
undermasses.  The  church  that  holds  the  ideal  of  a  decaying 
aristocracy  in  this  age,  is  calling  upon  a  dead  past  to  save  from 
the  resistless  avalanche  of  a  new  world  life. 


CHAPTER    V. 

Sectarianism. 

Sectarianism  iis  the  personal  equation  in  religion.  As  many 
men  so  many  minds.  Grant  to  these  men  religious  liberty,  and 
their  division  along  the  lines  of  personal  sympathies,  tastes  and 
antipathies  will  be  certain.  In  this  sense,  sectarianism  has  a  true 
mission  to  fulfil  for  man.  In  its  true  development  Jc  should 
mean  liberty  in  non-essentials,  diversity  within  a  great  unity. 

The  denial  of  liberty  in  the  past  has  been  the  potent  cause  of 
the  strife  and  bloodshed  that  has  disgraced  the  record  of  historic 
Christianity. 

Uniformity  gained  by  force  does  not  mean  unity.  The  belief 
that  it  does  is  the  one  ti'agic  superstition  of  our  history.  To  pre- 
serve this  "unity"  of  the  Jewish  religion  the  constituted  authori- 
ties crucified  Jesus  Christ.  Such  is  the  record  of  tlie  thumb- 
screw, the  rack,  the  wheel,  the  torch.  This  spirit  drenched  Eng- 
land in  blood,  bathed  the  world  in  Huguenot  tears,  sent  Alva 
into  the  Netherlands  to  butcher  18,000  victims  in  six  years,  and 
in  Protestant  history  burned  Servetus  in  the  OM  World,  the 
witches  in  New  England,  and  imprisoned  and  whipped  the  Bap- 
tists in  Virginia.  The  best  definition,  therefore,  of  a  saint  ever 
made  is  "One  cannonaded  while  living;    canonized  when  dead." 

Man  can  only  see  anything  through  the  medium  of  his  own 
personality.  The  captain  of  a  river  steamer  was  recently  re- 
ceived in  to  the  church  of  his  choice.  He  was  a  man  of  energy. 
They  made  him  an  officer.  Soon  after  his  election,  he  heard  one 
day  that  there  was  a  leak  in  the  church.  He  promptly  went  to 
the  building,  took  a  lantern  and  went  down  into  the  cellar  to  lo- 
cate it.  From  what  other  point  of  view  could  a  sailor  look  for  a 
leak? 

There  are  no  two  leaves  alike;  no  two  trees  alike.    Nature  du- 


SECTARIANISM,  16 

plicates  nothing.  And  her  life  is  one!  Infiinite  diTersity  in  a 
great  unity. 

It  is  just  beginning  to  dawn  on  the  Christian  world  that  thia 
is  a  po'ssibility.  But  the  dawn  slowly  breaks.  When  the  Sun 
of  love  and  liberty  rises,  one  of  the  chief  causes  of  our  stumbling 
will  be  removed. 

We  have  much  zeal  and  sacrifice  in  New  York,  but  as  yet  it 
takes  the  form  of  the  emphasis  of  small  differences  into  abnor- 
malities. It  is  sectarian  zeal  rather  than  Christian.  Many  of 
our  leading  pastors  wear  out  their  shoes  and  their  souls  running 
after  their  own  members  to  keep  them  out  of  the  church  of  a 
zealous  rival  around  the  corner. 

The  Presbyterians  established  a  successful  mission  work  in 
Persia.  When  its  success  was  observed  the  Episcopal  Church 
sent  over  its  "priests"  to  tell  these  deluded  people  that  they  had 
received  a  spurious  brand  of  Christianity,  and  that  the  only  gen- 
uine article  bore  their  trade-mark,  duly  copyrighted  and  pro- 
tected by  a  legislature  that  had  adjourned  sine  die  centuries  ago 
and  never  met  since.  Congregationalism  holds  New  England  and 
Presbyterians  now  are  establishing  missions  in  New  England  to 
save  their  people  from  the  damnation  of  error.  In  New  York's 
richest  and  most  prosperous  districts,  where  churches  are  least 
needed,  we  have  the  most  shameful  and  senseless  crowding  of 
Protestant  churches,  where  fundamental  differences  are  nothing. 

Nine-tenths  of  the  doctrines  of  all  the  denominations  of  Christ- 
endom are  one — Roman  Catholic  and  Protestant.  We  believe  in 
one  God — manifesting  himself  as  Father,  Son,  Spirit. 

We  believe  that  we  have  salvation  only  in  Christ. 

Our  songs  are  one.  Toplady  and  Wesley  were  violently  antag- 
onistic in  the  delinition  of  theology,  but  we  all  sing  "Rock  of 
Ages"  and  ".Tesus.  Lover  of  My  Soul."  Newman  was  a  Roman 
Catholic  Cardinal,  but  we  all  sing  "Lead  Kindly  Light."  The 
author  of  "In  the  Cross  of  Christ  I  Glory"  and  "Nearer  My  God 
to  Thee"  was  a  Unitarian.  But  we  all  sing  their  songs,  and  our 
heart  life  is  one! 


56j  SECTARIANISM. 

In  ethics,  the  Christian  world  is  one.  Love  to  God  and  love  to 
man,  and  the  Ten  Commandments  are  the  ethical  code  of  Christ- 
endom. 

Our  divisions  are  on  stupid  trifles.  The  smaller  the  difference, 
the  nercer  the  conflict. 

The  old  councils  wrestled  for  days  over  petty  differences  of 
opinion  on  the  details  of  theological  science,  and  occasionally  the 
Bishops  kicked  each  other  to  death  by  way  of  argument. 

The  Greek  and  the  Latin  Churches  are  separated  by  fewer 
differences  than  any  other,  and  yet  they  are  the  widest  apart. 
The  Pope  and  the  Czar  are  implacable  foes  and  eternal  rivals. 
The  unspeakable  Turk  stands  guard  with  his  musket  to  keep 
Greek  and  Latin  priests  from  tearing  each  other  to  pieces  over 
the  tomb  of  Jesus  during  Passion  week! 

The  effects  of  the  sectarian  method  are  everywhere  apparent 
in  the  centres  of  our  modern  life,  and  nowhere  so  painfully  as  in 
New  York.  The  consequence  is  that  just  those  fields  whose 
needs  are  most  painful  are  those  invariably  deserted  in  the  sec- 
tarian scramble  for  the  best  positions.  One  million  four  hundred 
thousand  people  in  New  York  live  in  second  and  third-class  ten- 
ements. There  are  districts  of  50,000  of  these  people  without  a 
single  church  of  any  sort  among  them!  The  scramble  for  choice 
corner  lots  in  the  favored  districts  continues  unabated.  Imagine, 
if  you  can,  a  consultation  among  the  Apostles  on  the  subject  of 
real  estate  in  Jerusalem  and  Rome  for  church  sites.  Imagine,  if 
you  can,  St.  Peter  describing  with  eloquence,  a  choice  bit  of 
ground  on  a  new  avenue,  soon  to  be  peopled  by  the  very  rich 
merchants  whose  caravans  brought  in  daily  the  treasures  of  the 
heathen  world. 

The  waste  of  men,  zeal  and  money  in  the  senseless  duplica- 
tion of  Protestant  Churches  in  communities  where  they  are  not 
needed,  is  something  appalling.  It  is  estimated  by  a  careful 
church  statistician,  who  has  made  a  detailed  study  of  the  sub- 
ject, that  there  are  25,000  such  Protestant  churches  in  America, 


SECTARIANISM.  57 

that  have  no  reason  for  their  existence.    More  than  $12,500,000 
are  locked  up  in  these  dead  plants.    It  is  a  crime. 

In  division  and  fight  there  is  always  weakness.  Whenever 
the  men  who  conduct  any  great  business  begin  to  fight  them- 
selves, forthwith  the  business  is  mixed.  It  does  not  matter  how 
ancient  and  honorable  the  establishment,  it  must  go  down  in  a 
factional  fight.  This  law  is  absolutely  without  exception.  In 
one  sense  the  visible  church  is  a  business  establishment,  and  its 
affairs  must  be  conducted  on  business  principles.  Some  years 
ago  the  country  was  crazy  on  the  subject  of  baseball.  Thousands 
of  people  crowded  the  fields  to  witness  this  truly  national  amuse- 
ment. The  baseball  people  began  to  fight  among  themselves  and 
their  successes.  We  had  the  senseless  duplication  of  buildings 
and  grounds  at  enormous  expense.  They  fought  each  other  in 
the  newspapers.  Then  the  public  quit  the  habit  of  baseball  and 
went  back  to  its  business,  and  there  was  a  season  of  wrecks  and 
assignments  and  reorganization. 

Recently  the  American  public  were  crazy  on  yachts  and  yacht- 
ing. The  rage  continued  until  the  big  yachtsmen  began  to  quar- 
rel. Whereupon  the  people  quit  reading  about  yachts  and  turned 
their  attention  to  other  things.  This  has  been  precisely  the  effect 
of  our  senseless  and  extravagant  wars  with  one  another  in  the 
religious  world.  I  wonder  when  it  will  cease  and  we  will  grant 
each  other  the  right  to  differ  on  small  things  and  yet  work  to- 
gether as  one  man  to  accomplish  the  great  thing — the  salvation 
of  man. 


CHAPTER    VI. 

Dead  Theologies- 

Theology  is  a  science.  Religion  is  a  life.  The  one  is  an  analy- 
sis, the  other  a  fact.  Theology  therefore  must  always  express 
itself  in  the  terms  of  the  knowledge  of  the  age.  It  bears  the 
same  relation  to  religion  that  the  science  of  physiology  bears  to 
the  body.  The  old  physiologists  knew  nothing  about  the  circu- 
lation of  the  blood,  or  the  nervous  system.  Each  new  discovery 
enlarges  by  so  much  the  science  which  was  its  expression.  As- 
tronomy has  grown  as  our  knowledge  of  the  heavens  has  ex- 
panded from  year  to  year.  We  welcome  every  new  discovery 
and  add  it  to  the  sum  of  our  knowledge  with  gratitude  to  God. 
The  unique  feature  about  the  science  of  theology  is  that  many  of 
its  professors  deny  the  possibility  of  enlargement.  The  human 
race  has  grown  from  infancy  to  mature  manhood;  the  knowledge 
of  the  world  has  been  increased  every  hour  of  its  history — and 
yet  theologians  insist  that  theology  is  a  mummy  and  a  mummy 
it  shall  ever  remain.  The  stage-coach  yielded  to  the  vestibuled 
limited,  the  sailing  vessel  to  the  ocean  greyhound,  but  theology 
rakes  up  the  ashes  of  a  dead  past  and  weeps  over  the  grave  of 
Adam.  We  are  solemnly  informed  that  the  minds  of  the  long 
past  centuries  only  could  comprehend  and  express  truth.  We 
are  commanded  to  learn  the  science  of  theology  only  from  the 
ages  in  which  the  science  of  medicine  consisted  in  bleeding;  che- 
mistry was  a  black  art,  astronomy  the  profession  of  a  fakir,  and 
electricity  was  regarded  as  a  manifestation  of  the  devil  or  the 
shekina  of  God!  Knowledge  is  the  inheritance  of  all  mankind 
except  the  preacher.  He  must  not  taste  of  the  tree  of  knowledge 
under  penalty  of  death. 

PEOGEESS    AND    STAGNATION. 

In  1840  a  young  Irishman  was  sent  to  the  New  York  peniten- 
tiary for  life  for  killing  a  man  in  a  drunken  frenzy.     He  was 


DEAD    THEOLOGIES,  r  59 

pardoned  some  time  ago  by  the  governor.  He  emerged  from  the 
prison  a  grey-haired,  bent  old  man.  The  world  was  new  to  him. 
He  walked  the  streets  of  New  York  in  unceasing  wonder.  He 
gazed  upon  the  Brooklyn  Bridge  as  though  it  were  a  miracle. 
The  towering  fifteen  story  buiJding  seemed  about  to  topple  and 
crush  ^im.  What  a  different  world  it  was  from  the  one  he  knew 
fifty  years  ago.  New  York  had  grown  from  a  town  of  300,000 
infhabitants  to  the  huge  metropolis,  the  centre  of  3,000,000  of 
people,  the  second  cirty  of  the  civilized  world.  Human  slavery 
had  been  abolished,  and  the  nation,  baptized  in  blood,  had  risen 
to  a  new  life.  The  German  Empire  had  been  created;  the  maps 
of  t!lie  world  made  over  again.  Steam  had  been  practically  ap- 
plied to  travel  and  the  face  of  the  earth  transformed.  There 
were  no  more  seas.  Liverpool  had  been  brought  nearer  to  New 
York  than  San  Francisco.  The  telegraph  had  made  the  world 
a  whispering  gallery,  and  the  cylinder  printing  press  universal 
education  a  fact,  not  a  dream;  while  the  dynamo  had  crowned 
the  brow  of  humanity  with  a  coronet  of  llffht.  He  gazed  upon 
a  new  world.  Old  things  had  passed  away.  But  had  he  ex- 
amined the  Protestant  churches  of  New  York  he  would  have 
found  but  one  serious  change,  and  that  geographical — they  had 
moved  uptown!  Their  theology  sihows  no  growth — ^their  methods 
are  the  methods  used  by  their  fathers  and  their  grandfathers,  in 
this  age  of  progress,  a  solecism — stupid,  irrational,  immoral! 

HOMES    FOE   THE   AGED. 

The  results  of  this  method  were  inevitable.  The  men  who 
have  made  this  age  the  miracle  of  history  soon  learn  to  treat  the 
church  with  contempt.  They  leave  it  to  the  women  and  children 
and  go  about  the  more  serious  work  of  life — that  life  whose 
activities  involve  the  progress  of  the  human  race,  that  life  of 
reality  in  which  deeds  are  the  only  creeds  that  are  worthy  of 
notice.  Hence  the  Protestant  churches  become  more  and  more 
simply  homes  for  the  aged,  the  infirm,  the  feeble  minded,  the 


60  DEAD   THEOLOGIES. 

griefs  of  widowhood  and  kindergarten  for  children  young  and 
old. 

The  essence  of  Protestantism  is  the  rebellion  of  the  reason 
against  the  shackles  of  a  mechanical  "authority."  Protestant- 
ism, with  conscience  fettered  by  tradition,  stultifies  its  own  life 
and  has  no  reason  for  its  existence.  Protestantism,  because  of 
its  very  nature,  must  go  forward  or  die.  There  is  a  tendency 
even  in  great  minds  to  grow  weary  and  stop  in  their  upward 
march,  become  traditionalists  and  reactionaries.  Find  this  where 
you  will  it  means  decay.  Even  Daniel  Webster  illustrates  this 
truth. 

In  1838,  Daniel  Webster,  our  greatest  constitutional  lawyer, 
said  on  the  floor  of  the  United  States  Senate,  in  opposition  to  a 
measure  then  before  Congress  to  establish  a  post  route  from  In- 
dependence, Mo.,  to  the  mouth  of  the  Columbia  River:  "What 
do  we  want  with  this  vast  worthless  area?  This  region  of  sav- 
ages and  wild  beasts,  of  deserts,  shifting  sands  and  whirlwinds 
of  dust,  of  cactus  and  prairie  dogs?  To  what  use  could  we  ever 
hope  to  put  these  great  deserts,or  these  endless  mountain  ranges, 
impregnable  and  covered  to  their  very  base  with  eternal  snow? 
What  can  we  ever  hope  to  do  with  the  Western  coast?  A  coast 
of  three  thousand  miles,  rockbound,  cheerless,  uninviting,  and 
not  a  harbor  in  it!  What  use  have  we  for  such  a  country?  Mr. 
President,  I  will  never  vote  one  cent  from  the  public  treasury  to 
place  the  Pacific  coast  one  inch  nearer  Boston  than  it  now  is." 

But  there  were  found  younger  spirits  willing  to  make  the  rash 
experiment.  In  1894  Colorado  produced  $11,000,000  in  gold  and 
$14,000,000  in  silver.  The  city  of  Denver  has  160,000  inhabitants, 
and  its  smooth  pavements  flaslh  daily  with  20,000  bicycles.  And 
what  would  California,  with  its  tons  of  gold  and  silver  and  mil- 
lions of  tons  of  golden  fruit,  and  its  great  shipyards  say  to-day 
to  this  polished  effort  of  the  great  constitutional  lawyer!  Where 
one  obstacle  is  thrown  in  the  way  of  material  progress,  a  hun- 
dred barriers  are  erected  before  the  pioneer  of  theology.  He  is 
not  only  opposed — he  is  cursed,  hounded,  persecuted,  excommu- 


DEAD   THEOLOGIES.  61 

nicated!  Although  New  York  is  the  centre  of  our  progressive 
life,  no  man  has  dared  to  brook  the  traditions  of  the  elders  in  the 
world  of  theology  without  having  the  hounds  set  on  his  trail. 

The  answer  to  any  aggressive  movement  has  been  "Back  to 
the  old  paths!"  Are  these  traditionalists  and  reactionaries 
worthy  of  leadership?  What  is  their  history'?  Every  step  in  the 
progress  of  the  race  toward  freedom  and  light  has  been  fought, 
inch  by  inch,  with  this  old  enemy  of  knowledge.  The  supersti- 
tion that  seeks  to  limit  the  horizon  of  the  human  soul  within  the 
bounds  of  personal  or  ancestral  traditions  has  ever  been,  and  is 
to-day,  one  of  the  deadliest  foes  with  which  the  hopes  of  man 
ever  contended.  It  seems  utterly  preposterous  that  in  this  en- 
lightened age,  here  in  New  York  City,  the  centre  of  free  thought 
for  a  new  world,  we  should  have  to-day  the  narrowest  and  most 
bigoted  ecclesiasticism. 

HEKESY  !    HERESY  ! 

Yet  it  is  so.  One  hundred  and  sixteen  clergymen  of  the  Epis- 
copal Church  that  recently  made  overtures  to  the  Christian 
world  for  church  union  fiercely  demand  the  scalps  of  two  of  her 
mightiest  men  for  daring  to  invite  the  ministers  of  other  Chris- 
tian bodies  to  speak  to  their  people  at  a  special  Friday  evening 
service!  Our  good  Presbyterian  brethren  also  demanded  the 
head  of  Prof.  Briggs  in  a  charger  because  he  had  been  guilty  of 
the  crime  of  thinking,  and  worse  still,  of  giving  utterance  to  his 
thoughts.  These  men  invariably  change  their  tactics  during  the 
progress  of  the  battle  they  hasten  to  join.  They  first  call  to  war 
with  a  whoop—  with  a  mighty  noise — with  a  great  hoot!  They 
next  declare  in  the  fiercest  language  that  the  Bible  is  being  de- 
stroyed. Then  in  a  little  while  after  they  have  crucified  some  of 
God's  noblest  servants,  they  all  solemnly  protest  that  in  reality 
they  always  held  the  same  doctrine!  They  then  blow  their  noses, 
scent  the  air  for  a  new  trail,  and  whet  their  jaw  bones  for  anoth- 
er conflict  in  new  fields. 


62  DEAD   THEOLOGIES. 

I  fearlessly  maintain  tliat  the  men  who  have  been  the  cham- 
pions of  the  forms  and  traditions  of  ecclesiasticism  have  ever 
been,  and  are  to-day,  the  deadliest  enemies  of  true  Christianity. 

They  have  systematically  repressed,  crucified  or  destroyed  the 
personahty  of  the  noblest  ministers  of  truth. 

CHEIST   A   HEEETIC. 

These  are  the  men  who  crucified  the  Christ.  They  slew  Him 
because  He  kept  not  the  word  of  the  elders.  They  hated  Him 
because  He  emphasized  the  truth  that  God  is  spirit  and  they 
that  worship  Him  must  worship  in  spirit  and  in  truth.  He  set 
at  naught  their  ecclesiastical  tom-foolery  and  plainly  told  them 
that  they  were  whited  sepulchres — hypocrites  who  could  not 
escape  the  damnation  of  hell.  Theirs  was  the  most  constant, 
persistent,  dogged  and  utterly  devilish  opposition  Jesus  encoun- 
tered. They  followed  Him  like  hounds.  They  asked  Him  cun- 
ningly devised  questions  to  convict  Him  of  heterodoxy.  They 
tried  to  catch  Him  in  His  words.  They  accused  Him  of  eating 
with  unwa^ied  hands.  They  accused  Him  of  breaking  the  Sab- 
bath. They  declared  that  He  ate  with  sinners.  They  said  Ibio 
was  the  friend  of  publicans  and  harlots.  He  did  all  these  things, 
He  M'as  all  these  things,  plainly  telling  them  that  He  came  not 
to  call  the  righteous,  but  sinners.  When  at  last  they  despaired 
of  binding  his  divine  personality  with  the  chains  of  their  tradi- 
tions, they  slew  Him.  They  flapped  their  sable  wings,  called 
their  council  under  cover  of  the  night,  condemned  Him  to  de  "th 
for  heresy,  dragged  Him  uyt  Calvary's  hill,  and  crucified  Him, 
mocking  and  saying:  "He  saved  others!  Himself  He  cannot 
save!" 

Since  the  «rucifixion  these  men  who  have  been  busy  keeping 
the  traditions  of  the  elders  have  continued  bravely  their  work  of 
destroying  the  divinest  personalities  among  the  servants  of 
truth.  Traditionalism  stoned  Stephen  to  death.  Traditional- 
ism slew  the  Apostles.    Traditionalism  has  been  busy  with  red 


DEAD    THEOLOGIES.  63 

hands,  butchering  the  Lord's  anointed  down  to  the  latest  gene- 
raition  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

JOHN   WESLEY,    "A   LIAB." 

Canon  Farrar  says  of  John  Wesley: 

"The  most  simple,  the  most  innocent,  the  most  generous  of 
men,  he  was  called  a  liar,  an  immoral  and  designing  intriguer,  a 
pope,  a  Jesuit,  a  swindler,  the  most  notorious  hypocrite  living. 
The  clergy,  I  grieve  to  say,  led  the  way.  Rowland  Hill  called 
Wesley  a  lying  apostle,a  designing  wolf,  a  dealer  in  stolen  wares, 
and  said  that  he  was  as  unprincipled  as  a  rook,  and  as  silly  as 
jackdaw,  first  pilfering  his  plumage,  and  then  going  proudly 
forth  to  display  it  to  a  laughing  world.  The  revival  of  religion 
had  to  make  its  way  among  hostile  bishops,  furious  controver- 
sialists, jibing  and  libellous  newspapers,  angry  men  of  the  world, 
prejudiced  juries,  and  brutal  lies.  And  yet  it  prevailed,  because 
one  with  God  is  always  in  a  majority. 

CHOKED   TO   DEATH. 

They  have  choked  them  to  death  with  orthodox  iron  collars 
forged  around  their  young  necks  in  their  preliminary 
training.  Many  of  these  traditional  institutions  advertise  their 
.shops  with  the  boast  that  their  collars  are  warranted  to  hold  for 
time' and  eternity;  that  if  a  man  remains  long  enough  to  fix  it 
firmly  about  his  neck,  he  is  certain  to  think  only  in  one  set 
groove,  and  then  only  to  a  limited  degree.  When  the  men  begin 
to  grow,  the  collar  never  grows.  It  was  not  made  to  grow.  In- 
flammation sets  in.  The  man  either  breaks  the  collar  or  chokes 
to  death.  To  break  the  collar  is  a  very  painful  operation.  The 
flesh  has  grown  to  it  and  all  around  it.  Besides,  if  he  persists  in 
breaking  the  collar  the  traditionalists  who  forged  it  proceed  to 
do  their  best  to  break  his  neck  before  it  has  time  to  get  new 
strength  in  freedom.  Thousands  of  men  allow  themselves  to  be 
choked  gradually  to  death  rather  than  enter  on  the  painful  strug- 
gle, and  perhaps  get  their  necks  broken.    They  smother  the  best 


64  DEAD    THEOLOGIES. 

ministers  to  death.  Sraother  them  to  death  with  the  old,  worm- 
eaten  mantles  that  some  good  men  of  another  generation  wore. 
David,  "when  he  had  served  his  generation,  fell  on  sleep."  But 
these  men  insist  that  the  generation  of  the  past,  not  the  genera- 
tion of  the  present,  be  served.  Some  of  the  best  preachers  ever 
called  to  this  city  have  been  smothered  to  death  because  tradi- 
tionalists have  heaped  upon  them  the  worn-out  rubbish  of  former 
ages.  These  traditionalists  are  not  altogether  heartless.  They 
have  feeling.  They  weep  mightily  over  the  fall  of  Adam,  while 
ttie  children  of  Adam  stumble  over  them  into  hell.  They  are  too 
busy  weeping  over  the  grave  of  Adam  to  pay  any  attention  to 
his  children.  Besides,  they  take  refuge  in  the  consoling  doctrine 
of  predestined  damnation  and  election,  and  give  free  course  to 
their  historic  and  ancient  grief. 

FLAIME,    SWOED,    THUMBSCEEW,    EACK 

Traditionalists  have  heaped  upon  the  church  of  Christ  the 
infamy  of  a  history  of  cruelty  and  inhumanity,  of  flame  and 
swo-'d,  thumbscrew,  rack  and  torch. 

Ecclesiastical  Christianity  is  one  thing,  the  Christianity  of 
Christ  another  thing.  These  two  things  are  no  more  alike  than 
blood  and  milk.  The  bloodiest  pages  in  the  history  of  the  hu- 
man race  have  been  those  written  by  the  merciless  hand  of  the 
traditionalist.  Tradition  sent  Alva  into  the  Netherlands  to  ravage 
with  a  storm  of  fire  and  blood,and  disgrace  the  name  of  humanity 
in  the  sacred  name  of  Christ.  Tradition  revoked  the  edict  of 
Nantes,  until  the  soil  of  France  was  drunk  with  the  blood  of  her 
children.  Tradition,  breathing  the  breath  of  hell,  led  the  trem- 
bling sons  and  daughters  of  faith,  barefooted  and  blindfolded, 
over  burning  plowshares,  stretched  them  upon  the  wheel  and 
rack,  tore  them  limb  from  limb,  sparing  not  for  the  groan  of  age, 
the  cry  of  motherhood,  or  the  lisp  of  childhood.  With  hellish 
glee  they  kindled  the  martyrs'  fires,  and  danced  with  joy  at  the 
sight  of  roasting  flesh. 

Tradition  with  holy  zeal   hunts  the  Anabaptists   like   wild 


DEAD   THEOLOGIES.  66 

beasts,  and  on  the  shore  of  a  new  world  burns  people  at  the 
stake  in  New  England  and  lays  the  lash  on  the  Baptist  in  Vir- 
ginia. The  Bible  they  have  made  a  bludgeon  with  which  to  brain 
heretics.  Its  word  they  have  forged  into  chains.  Its  leaves  they 
have  used  as  fuel  to  kindle  martyr  fires. 

CRIMINAL   STUPIDITY. 

With  unfathomable  stupidity  these  men  have  persisted  in  ar- 
raigning the  reason,  the  heart  and  the  knowledge  of  the  race 
against  Jesus  Christ  and  his  religion. 

They  have  assaulted  science  and  set  back  the  progress  of  the 
world  for  generations  at  a  time.  Science  is  the  revealer  of  God 
in  nature.  They  have  sought  to  put  out  the  light  of  science  in 
the  name  of  God.  They  stretched  Galileo  on  the  rack  because  he 
invented  the  telescope  and  discovered  the  laws  of  God  and  the 
heavens.  They  tortured  him  in  the  name  of  the  God  whom  he 
was  serving.  For  giving  wings  to  his  thoughts  and  soaring  amid 
the  elements  to  find  God,  they  burned  Bruno.  When  William 
Carey,  the  apostle  of  modern  missions,  rose  tremblingly  and  gave 
voice  to  the  great  love  that  burned  in  his  soul  for  the  heathen 
world,  tradition,  with  utmost  dignity,  thundered,  "sit  down, 
young  man." 

In  the  name  of  a  God  of  a  human  made  orthodoxy,  they  have 
dethroned  reason,  crowned  and  canonized  stupidity.  In  other 
words,  they  have  insisted  on  making  a  puerile  system  of  human 
dogmatism  the  infallible  guide  of  thought.  They  have  set  the 
bounds  beyond  which  the  mind  of  man  shall  not  dare  even  think. 
They  insist  that  the  very  language  of  this  human  dogmatism 
that  smells  of  the  dust  and  rubbish  of  the  Dark  Ages,  shall  be 
considered  divine  and  infallible.  The  errors,  controversies,  ab- 
surdities and  ignorance  of  the  past  they  insist  shall  be  now  held 
sacred,  because  it  is  ancient.  They  insist  that  an  age  of  the 
world  in  which  God  and  His  angels  dwelt  afar  off  in  some  un- 
thinkable corner  of  the  universe,  and  tlie  devil  and  his  minions 


66  DEAD   THEOLOGIES. 

were  everywhere  near,  that  such  an  age  only  could  furnish  men 
competent  to  formulate  a  creed  worthy  of  the  God  of  love. 

That  an  age  which  rejoiced  in  the  burning  of  witches,  the  trial 
and  execution  of  dumb  animals  as  criminals,  and  the  public 
whipping  of  church  bells  for  heresy,  should  give  forth  the  last 
effort  of  the  race  in  the  expression  of  true  faith  in  God.  Under 
the  guidance  of  such  men  the  dogmatic  traditionalists  of  to-day 
are  sent  as  a  judgment  upon  the  world.  Contrast  the  attitude 
of  Orthodox  assault  on  science  with  the  spirit  of  the  scientific 
seekers  after  truth  in  this  century.  Prof.  Lincoln  of  Brown 
University  describes  in  the  "Youth's  Companion"  a  scene  which 
he  witnessed  at  Berlin  when  he  was  attending  a  session  of  the 
Royal  Academy  of  Sciences.  A  large  company  of  learned  men 
had  gathered  in  a  handsome  academic  hall.  The  members  were 
seated  at  a  long  table,  at  the  he=id  of  which  was  the  platform 
occupied  by  the  officers.  Prof.  Lincoln  took  a  seat  near  the  door, 
and  listened  to  a  paper  which  one  of  the  learned  men  was  read- 
ing. The  door  was  quietly  opened  while  nearly  all  the  mem- 
bers was  sitting  with  their  backs  to  it.  A  venerable  man,  with 
stooping  figure  and  an  infirm  sitep,  softly  crossed  the  threshold, 
and  seemed  anxious  to  avoid  observation.  One  of  the  members 
at  the  table  happened  to  turn  his  head,  and  caught  sight  of  the 
visitor.  Instantly  he  rose  in  his  place.  The  president  of  the 
academy,  glancing  across  the  room,  also  spra.ng  to  his  feet.  Then 
one  member  after  another  recognized  the  impressive  face  and 
figure  of  the  old  man  who  was  quietly  making  his  way  toward 
the  seat  reserved  for  him,  and  before  he  had  reached  it  the  whole 
company  Avere  on  their  feet.  The  learned  man  who  was  reading 
the  paper  was  silent,  and  officers,  members  and  spectators  re- 
mained standing  until  the  aged  visitor  had  taken  a  seat.  The 
guest  was  Alexander  Humboldt,  then  in  his  eighty-eighth  year, 
infirm  in  body,  but  vigorous  in  mind.  The  academy  paid  him  a 
unique  tribute  of  silent  reverence  as  the  hoary  leader  of  mo- 
dern science.  There  was  no  applause  when  he  entered  the  hall, 
and  neither  clapping  of  hands  nor  shuffling  of  feet  when  he  took 


DEAD    THEOLOGIJSS.  67 

his  seat.  They  stood  in  their  places  as  though  a  king  had  come 
in  among  them,  and  then  silently  resumed  their  seats,  and  list- 
ened to  the  reading  of  the  scientific  paper. 

Orthodox  religion  alone  can  claim  the  crowning  stupidity  of 
heading  the  assault  on  Humboldt  and  his  school!  These  holy 
simpletons  have  driven  manhood  from  the  modern  church.  The 
congregations  of  your  ordinary  traditionalism  to-day  are  com- 
posed of  about  four  women  to  one  man.  The  men  have  formed 
themselves  into  scores  of  secret  societies  outside  of  the  church. 
These  societies  many  of  them,  have  morj  of  real  Chritianity 
than  the  churches  they  have  undermined.  A  real  human  brother- 
hood is  their  basis;  a  vital  religion  is  their  bond  of  unity.  This 
is  an  awful  indictment  of  the  dead  formalism  and  ecclesiastical 
dry  rot  with  whicih  our  churches  are  afflicted.  I  know  of  some 
co-operative  societies  of  workingmen  who  make  no  pretentions 
to  religion^  who  are  embodying  in  life  the  spirit  and  teachings  of 
Jesus  Christ  in  a  higher  degree  than  scores  of  churches  I  know. 
There  are  "infidel"  clubs  in  this  very  city  that  may  go  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  before  some  churches. 

ALIENATED   THE   MASSES. 

These  champions  of  traditionalism  have  neglected  and  alien- 
ated the  masses  of  the  people,  emptied  the  churches,  and  pro-t 
duced  a  collapse  of  organic  church  life  in  the  centres  of  our  civi- 
lization. Here  you  touch  the  secret  of  our  fatal  up-town  move-* 
ment  of  churches.  Why  do  they  move  up-town?  Simply  be- 
cause tradition  refuses  to  readjust  itself  to  a  changed  civiliza-' 
tion.  They  thus  become  apostles  of  the  gospel  of  geography. 
They  say  the  people  have  moved  up-town — that  the  people  have 
gone.  Take  your  stand  there  beside  one  of  those  great  church 
buildings  being  torn  down.  Do  you  want  people?  As  far  as  the 
eye  can  reach,  rolls  a  restless  ocean  of  humanity. 

These  are  the  men  who  have  in  large  measures  driven  spirit- 
ual religion  out  of  the  church. 

Dr.  Bruce,  of  Scotland,  well  said:    "I  certainly  believe  that 


68  t>EAi),\THhuLOGIES. 

there  are  many  more  unpolished  diamonds  hidden  in  the  chutch^ 
(ess  mass  of  humanity  than  the  respectable  church  going  part  of 
the  community  has  any  idea  of.  I  am  even  disposed  to  think 
that  a  great  and  steadily  increasing  portion  of  the  moral  worth 
of  society  lies  outside  of  the  Church,  separated  from  it,  not  by 
godlessness  but  rather  by  exceptionally  moral  earnestness. 
Many,  in  fact,  have  left  the  church  in  order  to  be  Christians." 
— Kingdom  of  God,  p.  144. 

There  is  being  built  in  fact  a  vast  Church  outside  the  Church. 
Men  have  emphasized  the  tithing  of  mint  and  cummin,  neglect- 
ing the  weightier  matters  of  the  law,  judgment  and  mercy  and 
f aitlh,  unitii  they  have  destroyed  faith  in  the  minds  of  thousands. 

Is  it  not  time  we  should  turn  on  the  light  in  every  department 
of  human  thought?  Will  my  creed  suffer?  If  so,  let  it  suffer. 
If  I  am  wrong,  the  man  who  shows  where  I  am  wrong  is  my 
friend.  I  shall  thank  him  for  it.  I  rejoice  in  a  free  conscience. 
It  is  my  birthright  as  a  man. 

Let  the  prophets  of  the  race  move  forward  wuth  fearless  tread! 
The  church  must  be  rescued  from  the  curse  of  traditionalism  or  die. 
Let  us  adapt  our  methods  of  work  to  the  needs  of  the  hour — to 
the  end  that  men  will  be  reached  and  saved. 


CHAPTER    VII. 

The  Success  of  the  Salvation  Army. 

The  Salvation  Army  not  only  holds  its  own  among  the  desert- 
ed thousands  of  down-town  New  York,  but  builds  here  its  great 
barracks  and  lifts  its  bannem  triumphant  amid  the  ruins  of  cow- 
ardly churches  that  have  moved  up-town. 

Why? 

Because  they  use  common  sense  methods  of  work.  They  have 
become  all  things  to  all  men,  if  by  all  means  they  may  save  some. 

They  are  the  bearers  of  good  news,  and  their  feet  are  swift. 
"How  beautiful  are  the  feet  of  them  that  bring  glad  tidings!" 
They  are  in  earnest  and  they  believe  they  are  commissioned  to 
bear  a  divine  message  to  the  world.  Children,  some  time  ago, 
in  a  vacant  lot  in  Philadelphia,  were  found  playing  with  bank 
checks — a  valuable  bundle  of  which  had  been  lost  from  the  mail. 
The  little  fellows  seemed  to  have  an  idea  that  it  was  commercial 
paper,  and  they  were  playing  bank — had  established  a  play  bank 
and  were  doing  a  thriving  business,  llhey  were  handling  money 
which  had  kept  the  wires  hot  from  city  to  city  trying  in  vain  to 
find  it,  and  when  found  of  course  the  messengers  hastened  to 
gather  up  the  precious  documents  and  file  them  away.  So  it 
seems  to  me  sometimes  the  church  has  been  playing  with  great 
truths.  Our  churches  have  set  themselves  down  in  some  favored, 
quiet  nooks  where  people  are  not  likely  to  disturb  them,  where 
the  police  will  not  interfere  with  them  or  passersby  intrude,  and 
there  they  play  at  the  great  work  of  a  world's  salvation.  There 
with  sacred  script,  with  these  messages  as  good  as  gold,  they 
play  at  church,  at  saving  men,  at  the  great  work  God  has  com- 
missioned them  to  do  in  earnest. 

If  you  look  at  the  work  of  this  army  you  will  find  they  are 


70         THE  SUCCESS   OF  TEE  SALVATION  ARMY. 

dead  in  earnest.  They  know  the  value  of  the  script  they  handle, 
and  they  go  on  swift  feet  to  carry  it  to  those  who  need  it  most. 
They  do  not  build  churches,  they  build  men.  The  early  apos- 
tolic church  did  not  build  church  buildings:  they  had  no  time. 
It  was  not  until  Christianity  began  to  crj'stallize  and  to  fossilize 
in  the  forms  of  institutions  that  men  began  to  build  tombs  in 
which  to  place  it.  These  men  who  have  thus  sought  to  revive 
apostolic  Christianity  have  gone  in  the  same  ways  as  the  first 
disciple  of  Jesus  Christ  went  forth  into  the  world,  using  all  in- 
stitutions that  exist,  if  by  all  these  means  they  may  reach  and 
save  men — "all  things  to  all  men  if  by  all  means  some  may  be 
saved."  In  India  they  become  Indians;  in  America,  Americans. 
In  the  wilds  of  a  savage  nation  they  would  go  and  adopt  their 
customs  and  dress,  if  need  be,  to  save  them.  What  a  contrast 
to  our  institutional  Christianity! 

WITHIN   THE   SHADOW   OF   ST.    MAEK's. 

John  Ruskin  describes  in  marvelous  language  the  great  Ca- 
thedral of  St.  Mark,  It  is  as  though  some  wonderful  artist  had 
taken  the  brush  of  genius  and  painted  before  your  very  eyes  its 
glory.  And,  after  he  finishes  that  wonderful  description,  he 
turns  his  attention  to  the  people  that  surge  before  the  cathedral 
doors  and  says  that  not  one  of  them — not  a  passerby,  not  a  sol- 
dier or  civiilian,  not  a  beggar  or  huckster,  not  a  solitary  soul  of 
the  great  crowd — ever  looks  up  at  its  beauty. 

But  up  against  the  very  foundation  stones  the  huckster  pushes 
his  stall.  Within  its  shadow  the  soldiers  discourse  their  music, 
which  drowns  the  sound  of  the  great  organ.  And,  without, 
lounging  like  lizards  basking  in  the  sun,  are  the  men  who,  with 
their  stiletto,  would  stab  in  the  heart  every  musician  that  pipes 
to  them,  did  they  dare.  And  the  images  of  Christ  and  the  saints 
look  down  on  it  all!  Oh,  paraphrase  of  ancient  Jerusalem,  where 
in  her  temples  they  bought  and  sold!  Institutions,  glorious  in 
form,  ceremonies  magnificent — but  a  lapse  and  lost  mass  of 
people  surge  by  your  cathedral  and  your  temple,  unmindful  of  its 


THE  SUCCESS  OF  THE  SALVATION  ABMT.         71 

existence,  with  the  devil  in  their  heart,  and  with  all  the  powers 
of  destruction  growing  in  every  muscle  and  transmitted  genera- 
tion unto  generation,  piling  wrath  against  wrath,  against  that 
day,  when  up  to  the  doors  of  that  cathedral  will  surge  a  mob 
that  will  raze  it  to  the  ground  and  leave  not  one  stone  upon 
another  unless  he  who  ministers  at  the  altar  within  shall  re- 
member that  Jesus  Christ  came  not  to  build  institutions,  but  to 
Slave  men. 

NOT   CHUKCH   POLITICIANS. 

In  their  purpose  and  methods  they  are  also  Christlike.  They 
are  the  friends  of  the  poor  and  outcast  world,  and  so  was  Jesus 
Christ.  Not  where  they  can  get  the  most  do  they  locate  their 
stations,  but  where  they  can  do  the  most.  When  we  build  our 
churches  we  want  the  best  plot  in  the  city,  where  the  grand  bou- 
levard intersects  the  great  cross-town  street,  where  the  elite  are 
moving,  where  the  bankers  and  brokers  are  congregating — there 
buy  a  lot  and  build  your  church,  and  you  will  rent  your  pews  at 
the  highest  possible  rate. 

In  the  results  of  their  work  they  show  the  world  that  they  are 
true  disciples  of  Christ.  Do  they  represent  the  true  spirit  of  the 
true  Christ?  Come  before  them  and  ask  the  same  supreme  test 
John  asked  of  Christ,  and  take  the  answer  Jesus  gave  and  apply 
it  to  them. 

John  sent  to  Jesus  and  asked  Him  if  He  be  the  Messiah,  or  if 
another  should  be  expected,,  and  Jesus  replied  telling  him  the 
lame  walk,  the  blind  see,  the  deaf  hear,  the  dead  are  raised,  and, 
climax  of  all,  the  poor  have  the  Gospel  preached  to  them.  Stand 
before  the  church  to-day  and  submit  to  it  this  supreme  test. 
Stand  before  the  army  of  cranks  to-day  and  submit  to  them  this 
supreme  test  and  hear  the  answer.  You  say:  "What  is  all  this 
noise  with  which  you  have  come  to  disturb  the  peace  and  civili- 
zation of  the  twentieth  century?  Are  you  disciples  of  Jesus?" 
They  can  answer  you  in  the  words  of  Jesus  Christ,  "Go  and  tell 
the  questioners  that  the  lame  walk,  the  blind  see,  the  lepers  are 


72         TEE  SUCCESS  OF  TEE  SALVATION  ARMY. 

cleansed;  that  the  dead  are  raised  and  the  poor  have  the  Gospel 
preached  to  them." 

THAT   ONE   MAN   BOOTH. 

The  Bishop  of  Winchester  says:  "If  ever  the  masses  are  to 
be  converted  it  must  be  by  an  organized  lay  body.  The  Salva- 
tion Army  has  set  the  church  the  example  of  courage."  Canon 
Liddon,  whose  voice  thrilled  the  world,  after  attending  a  Salva- 
tion Army  meeting  with  Mr.  Ste«d,  said:  "It  filled  me  with 
shame.  I  feel  guilty  when  I  think  of  myself.  To  think  of  these 
poor  people,  with  their  imperfect  grasp  of  truth — what  a  contrast 
between  what  they  and  we  are  doing!  When  I  see  how  little 
we  produce,  compared  with  what  that  meeting  exhibited,  I  take 
shame  to  mj'-self." 

John  Morley,  "free  thinker,"  skeptic,  said  in  1880:  "We  have 
all  been  on  the  wrong  track,  and  the  result  is  loss  to  show  than 
that  one  man  Booth.  Oh,  we  children  of  light — Spencer,  Arnold, 
Harrison  and  the  rest — spend  our  lives  in  endeavoring  to  dispel 
superstition  and  bring  in  an  era  based  on  reason,  education  and 
enlightened  self-interest,  but  this  man  has  produced  more  direct 
effect  upon  this  generation  than  all  of  us  put  together."  Mr. 
Stead  says:  "The  Army  has  deserved  well  of  the  State  because, 
training  the  people  in  self-government,it  has  done  more  to  spread 
the  genuine  culture  among  the  masses  than  Cambridge  and 
Oxford." 

It  is  needless  to  multiply  those  testimonies  from  great  men. 
They  are  convincing.  The  voice  of  the  Christian  world,  the 
voice  of  the  independent  thinking  world  to-day,  is  practically  a 
unit  as  to  the  results  of  the  work  of  this  Army. 

STONED   AND   CUESED. 

Yet  they  were  mobbed  and  stoned  and  cursed.  So  were  Jesus 
and  His  Disciples,  and  any  movement,  that  starts  in  this  world 
and  is  not  cursed  and  stoned  and  mobbed,  you  may  be  certain  of 
one  thing — that  there  is  too  close  a  connection  between  that 


TEE  SUCCESS  OF  TEE  SALVATION  ABMY.         73 

movement  and  the  world  itself,  for  if  a  man  attempts  to  really 
reach  and  save  this  world,  he  must  go  along  the  lines  not  on 
which  the  world  itself  moves,  but  he  must  take  the  model,  Jesus 
Christ,  and  if  he  does  he  will  land  on  Calvary,  if  he  lives  that 
life  to  its  inevitable,  logical  conclusion.  This  is  the  first  sign  of 
genuine  discipleship  of  Jesus  Christ.  They  were  stoned  and 
cursed  and  hissed  by  the  world  and  the  church. 

They  were  accused  of  sensationalism,  and  all  the  sins  that 
dome  from  it,  especially  by  the  church.  Being  sensational  they 
were  strictly  apostolic  and  Christlike.  The  apostle  Paul  was  a 
gre-at  sensationalist — that  is,  he  was  fool  enough  to  say:  *'I  will 
be  all  things  to  all  men,  if  by  that  means  I  may  save  siome.  When 
I  go  to  Athens  I  will  be  an  Athenian,  and  I  will  go  where  they 
are."  And  he  went  and  stirred  things  up  wherever  he  went. 
When  he  went  into  a  town  they  were  sometimes  so  excited  that 
they  dragged  him  before  the  magistrate  and  put  him  out.  The 
men  who  followed  Jesus  were  thus  sensational.  They  had  to  be 
if  they  preached  Christ. 

SACRED   EHEUMATISM. 

For  Christ  himself  was  a  sensation.  From  the  day  as  a  little 
child  he  sent  back  that  sensational  message  to  His  mother  in  the 
Temple,  "I  am  about  my  father's  business,"  to  the  day  He  at- 
tacked Scribe  and  Pharisee  and  said:  "You  miserable  hypo- 
crites, whited  sepulchers,  full  of  dead  men's  bones  within,  beau- 
tiful without,  you  make  long  prayers;  you  stand  in  public  places, 
and  your  hearts  are  black  as  hell.  O  generation  of  vipers,  who 
hath  warned  you  to  flee  from  the  wrath  to  come?"  To  whom  is 
He  talking?  To  the  priests  and  bishops  and  cardinals — the  great 
churchmen  of  His  day.  He  was  talking  about  the  established 
church  to  the  men  who  sat  in  the  seat  of  Moses  and  delivered 
the  law  to  the  people — the  men  unto  whom  had  been  delivered 
the  statutes  of  the  most  high  God.  From  the  day  He  began  to 
work  His  miracles  at  Cana  of  Galilee,  down  to  the  end,  He  was 
a  sensationalist  in  the  highest  and  truest  sense  of  the  word,  and 


74         THE  SUCCESS   OF  THE  SALVATION  ARMY. 

anybody  that  really  does  the  work  of  Christ  is  bound  to  atir 
things  wherever  he  goes,  and  if  he  does  not  he  has  failed  to 
touch  the  true  heart  and  life  of  the  Christ. 

For  my  own  part  I  would  rather  be  a  drummer  in  the  Salva- 
tion Army  and  bang  an  old  drum  through  this  world  for  the  sal- 
vation of  men  than  stand  in  the  mightiest  cathedral  on  this  earth 
and  preach  the  most  glorious  Gospel  to  a  handful  of  good  old 
men  and  women  who  are  so  old  in  the  faith  that  they  have  sacred 
rheumatism.  I  had  rather  be  a  human  sandwich  and  march 
through  the  streets  with  the  Grospel  written  on  my  back  and 
breast,  and  preach  the  Gospel  thus,  than  stand  beneath  Gothic 
arches  in  your  most  magnificent  frescoed  church  and  spout  to 
vacant  pews.  I  would  rather  be  an  old  John  Pounds,  of  Ports- 
mouth, with  a  hot  potato  in  my  hand — he  took  one  and  stuck  it 
under  the  nose  of  boys  in  the  streets,  until  he  saved  500  and 
made  them  magnificent  men — I  would  rather  wield  that  hot 
potato  for  the  salvation  of  men  than  wear  the  tiara  of  Leo  XIII. 
and  sit  on  the  throne  of  St.  Peter's  before  the  assembled  pilgrims 
of  the  world. 

Is  there  a  man  so  dull  in  the  world  to-day  that  does  not  know 
that  William  Booth  and  his  sainted  wife  were  God's  own  pro- 
phets. Not  one!  Yet  remember  the  reception  which  they  first 
met. 

There  are  some  lessons  the  church  ought  to  get  from  this  army. 
First,  in  the  Salvation  Army  it  does  not  take  a  long  creed  to  save 
the  world.  Look  at  our  creed  tinkers  to-day,  with  their  ham- 
mers and  nails  and  old  manuscripts,tinkering  away  at  the  creeds 
of  the  world.  I  thank  God  for  the  example  of  men,  fool  enough 
to  believe  that  all  that  is  necessary  for  a  creed  is  to  believe  in  the 
Father,  His  Son,  Jesus,  and  to  love  the  man  that  He  came  and 
died  for  so  tenderly  and  deeply  that  he  is  willing  to  go  down  into 
the  ditch  and  put  his  arms  under  him  and  say  to  him  in  his  rags 
and  filth,  "My  brother,  I  love  you." 

The  only  creed  needed  in  this  world  to  save  it  to-day  is  the 
vital  creed  Jesus  Christ  preached,  "Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord 


THE  SUCCESS   OF  THE  SALVATION  ARMY.         75 

thy  God  with  all  thy  heart,  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  And  that 
is  all  the  creed  of  the  Salvation  Army.  What  a  lesson  to  the 
church  to-day  raking  up  the  ashes  of  the  dead  past  and  trying  to 
fan  the  embers  to  a  flame,  that  from  it  they  may  light  again 
martyr  fires! 

The  church  should  understand  too,  from  the  army's  methods, 
that  the  way  to  reach  the  masses  is  to  go  for  them.  What  is  the 
matter  with  our  churches?  They  are  afraid  of  disturbing  their 
ancestors.  I  read  an  editorial  the  other  day  about  a  railroad  built  in 
Jerusalem  and  of  the  mourning  over  the  desecration  of  the  Holy 
L.and  by  the  engine.  You  would  have  thought  the  Emperor  of 
China  wrote  it.  They  have  kept  the  steam  engine  out  of  China 
for  centuries  because  it  would  disturb  the  supposed  sanctity  of 
the  soil.  As  though  those  old  hills  in  Palestine  were  God's  tem- 
ple only!  Jesus  said,  "Neither  at  Jerusalem  or  these  mountains 
is  to  be  the  place  where  God  shall  dwell,  but  he  is  to  dwell  in  the 
hearts  of  men."  You  might  run  a  steam  engine  all  over  Pales- 
tine, plant  it  all  in  foreign  fruits  and  desecrate  every  spot  there 
and  Christianity  will  be  just  as  glorious. 

FROM   DITCH   AND    GUTTEB. 

If  the  church  does  not  do  the  work  of  saving  the  world  God 
will  raise  up  a  church  from  the  ditch  and  gutter — that  has  noth- 
ing to  do  with  the  established  church — that  will  do  the  work  He 
came  into  the  world  to  do.  Some  of  our  good  brethren  met  the 
other  day  in  congress  and  discussed  the  question  whether  a  cer- 
tain ritual  should  read,  "He  descended  into  hell"  or  "went  down 
into  hell."  Think  of  bringing  the  scholarship  of  the  world  to 
bear  on  a  question  like  that  while  the  world  outside  is  literally 
tumbling  into  hell!  Whether  they  "descend"  or  "go  down  into" 
— they  get  there! 

A  lady  once  sat  at  a  table  beside  a  distinguished  scientist,  sup- 
posed to  be  Prof.  Huxley,  and  asked  him  if  it  was  not  a  serious 
thing  that  the  vicar  should  turn  his  face  to  the  East  in  adminis- 
tering the  sacrament.     He  said:     "My  dear  madam,  Sir  John 


76         THE  SUCCESS  OF  TEE  SALVATION  ARMY. 

Herschel  says  that  if  there  were  a  limitless  sea  between  this 
planet  and  the  nearest  big  star,  and  in  sailing  over  it  you  should 
drop  a  pea  at  the  end  of  every  mile,  it  would  take  10,000  ships 
of  600  tons  burden  each,  each  loaded  to  the  water  line  with  peas, 
to  reach  that  star.  Do  you  suppose  that  He  who  made  such  a 
universe  really  minds  whether  the  vicar  turns  his  face  to  the 
East  or  West,  North  or  South?" 

The  Phillippine  Islanders  are  a  people  who  venerate  sleep. 
They  think  it  sacrilegious  for  a  man  to  disturb  another  while  he 
sleeps,  especially  if  he  steps  over  his  sleeping  body.  I  know 
churches  that  venerate  the  idea  of  sleeping,  and  if  another  man 
should  step  over  them  while  they  slept  they  would  go  into  sacred 
spasms!  And  yet  we  think  we  are  civilized  and  smile  at  those 
poor  inhabitants  of  savage  islands. 

The  one  serious  hindrance  to  the  future  expansion  of  the  Army 
is  the  Imperialism  of  Gen.  Booth.  There  are  signs  of  the  end 
now  appearing.  This  future  is  thoroughly  unchristian  and  will 
be  modified  or  the  Army  will  cease  to  be  a  power. 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

The  Apparent  Success  of  the  Episcopal  Church. 

Apparently  the  only  exception  to  the  universal  failure  of  Pro- 
testantism in  New  York  is  to  be  found  in  the  Episcopal  Church. 
While  other  branches  of  Protestantism  have  failed  to  hold  the 
c-.idren  born  into  their  homes  during  the  past  decade,  from  the 
year  1885  to  1892,  the  Episcopal  Church  increased  its  member- 
ship from  30,000  to  39,000,  in  round  numbers.  That  is  to  say, 
their  net  gain  was  about  9,000.  This  is  a  little  more  than  the 
normal  birth-rate  of  the  membership,  and  while  it  is  no  great 
success,  it  stands  as  an  oasis  in  the  desert  that  calls  for  a  partic- 
ular examination  as  to  the  causes.  The  causes,  as  set  forth  by 
an  enthusiastic  exponent  of  the  church,  in  criticism  of  my  state- 
ments, are  as  follows: 

EITTJAXISM. 

"That  solemn,  beautiful,  dignified,  sacred  worship  of  God 
which  is  embodied  in  the  ritual  of  the  ancient  church  is  denied 
to  the  devotees  of  Protestantism,  hence  men  go  to  secret  socie- 
ties, where  they  find  at  least  an  imitation  of  it.  Again,  the 
preaching  function  has  been  exalted  to  such  a  degree  thait  the 
worship  of  God  (apart  from  the  sermon),  which  old-fashioned 
Christians  regarded  as  the  most  important  and  sacred  part  of 
the  service,  is  now  commonly  called  'preliminary  exercises!* 
Worship  is  made  a  mere  side  issue,  and  to  hear  a  man  talk  is 
regarded  as  the  motive  for  going  to  church.  That  being  so,  how 
can  we  expect  a  lawyer,  who  very  often  can  make  a  more  stir- 
ring speech  in  behalf  of  a  ragged  pickpocket  than  some  preach- 
ers can  in  behalf  of  religion,  or  a  drummer  who  extols  his  brand 
of  soap  with  more  eloquence  than  the  average  minister  his  doc- 


78  APPARENT  SUCCESS  OF  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCS. 

trine,  how  can  we  expect  such  men  to  go  to  church  for  the  sake 
of  sermons?  Return  to  their  places  the  divine  liturgy,the  solemn 
worship  of  God,  and  above  all  the  Holy  Sacraments  which  ope- 
rate on  the  soul  not  by  man  power,  or  rhetoric,  or  hero-worship, 
but  by  the  action  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  Give  back  to  men  the  su- 
pernatural elements  of  Christianity  that  Protestantism  has  rob- 
bed them  of,  and  they  will  go  to  church.  In  the  words  of  an 
eminent  Scotch  Presbyterian  divine:  'Our  pepole  have  been 
estranged  through  the  weariness  of  preaching.  Down  with  the 
pulpit  and  up  with  the  Mass.'  " 

PHILIilPS   BEOOKS 

In  answer  to  this  criticism  I  would  simply  say,  I  do  not  be- 
lieve that  the  ritual  of  the  Episcopal  Church  in  America,  is  a 
help:  but  I  believe,  upon  the  other  hand,  that  it  is  in  some  ways 
a  hindrance  to  the  advancement  of  their  cause.  Canon  Barrett 
of  London,  says,  in  so  many  words,  that  the  ritual  of  the  church 
is  an  impediment  in  the  eiforts  to  reach  the  masses  of  the  people; 
that  the  direct  services,  direct  prayer  and  direct  speech  of  the 
other  denominations  are  more  pov/erful  weapons  in  reaching  and 
holding  the  working  people  of  England.  The  Episcopal  Church 
was  first  in  the  field  in  America,  controlled  the  legislatures,  and 
controlled  society,  in  a  majority  of  the  Colonies.  It  has  failed 
to  hold  those  States,  and  to-day  occupies  one  of  the  subordinate 
positions,  in  point  of  membership,  in  the  Protestant  ranks  in 
America,  numbering,  all  told,  about  500,000  adherents,  in  a  total 
of  13,000,000.  The  ritual  has  been  a  positive  hindrance  in  the 
way  of  the  spread  of  the  church  and  its  work.  What  they  have 
done  they  have  done  in  spite  of  this,  not  because  of  it.  Besides, 
my  reverend  critic  evidently  belongs  to  the  school  of  the  High 
Church,  and  this  faction  of  the  Episcopal  faith  has  done  little 
to  build  up  the  church,  in  my  judgment,  but  has  been  a  constant 
feeder  of  Roman  Catholicism.  The  motto  with  which  he  closes 
— "Down  with  the  pulpit  and  up  with  the  Mass" — shows  the 
tendency  of  his  mind.    The  Episcopal  Church  in  this  country 


APPARENT  SUCCESS  OF  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH.  79 

has  been  powerful  as  its  pulpit  has  been  a  power.  One  of  the 
most  powerful  preachers  that  America  has  produced  was  Phil- 
lips Brooks,  Does  my  reverend  critic  man  to  say  that  he  could 
increase  the  power  of  the  Episcopal  Church  by  destroying  the 
pulpit  of  sndh  men  as  Brooks  and  hoisting  the  Mass  instead? 
This  is  sacred  nonsense. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  reasons  for  the  apparent  success  of 
the  Episcopal  Church  in  New  York  City  are  peculiarly  local, 
and  do  not  apply  to  the  Church  throughout  the  United  States. 
It  seems  to  me  that  there  are  three  reasons  for  this  success. 

THE   POWER   OF   MONEY- 

First,  is  the  enormous  money  power  concentrated  within  this 
church  in  the  city  of  New  York.  It  is  said  that  Trinity  corpora- 
tion alone  has  invested  property  worth  $150,000,000.  The  entire 
valuation  of  all  the  property  of  other  Protestant  denominations 
in  the  city  of  New  York  does  not  reach  $17,000,000.  There  are 
several  Episcopal  churches  in  the  city  whose  annual  budget  of 
expenditures  exceeds  $50,000.  This  is  a  tremendous  power.  It 
has  been  possible  with  these  enormous  resources  for  the  Episco- 
pal Church  to  go  into  new  neighborhoods,  buy  a  whole  block, 
erect  a  palatial  church  without  a  member,  build  a  magnificent 
school-house  and  parish-house,  place  a  full  organization  of  teach- 
ers and  clergymen  in  charge,  and  in  two  years  have  a  flourish- 
ing establishment. 

It  seems  to  me,  a  second  reason  why  this  church  has  specially 
succeeded  in  New  York  is  that  its  churches  are  well  manned. 
While  other  Protestant  denominations  have  adhered  to  the  idea 
of  a  one  man  ministry,  the  Episcopal  Church  has  placed  three, 
four,  five  men,  in  charge  of  each  parish.  From  the  exceedingly 
astute  and  scholarly  Bishop,  who  presides  over  the  diocese,  down 
through  its  various  ranks,  their  churches  are  superbly  officered. 
They  have  recognized  the  fact  that  one  man  cannot  do  the  work 
of  ten. 


80  APPARENT  SUCCESS  OF  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCJT, 

Third,  I  believe  they  have  succeeded  because  the  church  has 
recognized  mare  fully  and  fairly  the  social  aspects  of  Christian- 
ity. They  have  recognized  the  breadth  of  the  Christianity  of 
Christ  in  its  application  to  the  whole  life  of  ma  a,  and  here  have 
placed  themselves  in  touch  with  the  spirit  of  the  new  life  of  the 
century.  This  cannot  be  said  of  the  Episcopal  Church  gene- 
rally in  the  United  States.  It  is  true  in  Boston,  it  iis  true  in  New 
York.  I  do  not  know  another  great  city  of  which  so  much  can 
be  said.  Certainly  no  such  statement  applies  to  the  church  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  nation.  If  you  ask  the  question,  is  the 
Church  of  England,  of  which  the  Church  of  America  is  but  a 
branch — if  you  ask  the  question,  in  other  words,  if  the  Episcopal 
Church  is  advancing  or  decaying,  I  would  answer  by  quoting 
the  words  of  Dr.  Momerie,  the  representative  of  the  Church  of 
England  at  the  World's  Congress  of  Religions.  Hear  what  he 
says  upon  the 

"  DECADENCE    OF   THE   ENGLISH   CHUECH." 

"There  is  much  in  my  church  which  I  admire  and  love.  Its 
music,  its  architecture,  many  of  its  prayers,  a  few  of  its  hymns, 
a  little  of  its  teachings,  much  of  its  practice,  some  of  its  associ- 
ations, connected  as  they  have  been  with  the  great  joys  and  sor- 
rows of  life,  the  unselfish  devotion  of  a  large  number  of  its  cler- 
gy, these  things  are  of  inestimable  value.  But  I  am  convinced 
that  the  good  is  being  neutralized  by  the  evil,  and  that  there  is 
a  danger  of  both  speedily  perishing  in  one  common  catastrophe. 
The  church  is  in  imminent  peril — all  the  more  imminent  because 
it  is  seldom  recognized  or  suspected.  In  one  of  his  humorous 
poems,  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes  speaks  of  an  old  couple  who  had 
been  accustomed  for  many  years  to  drive  about  in  a  'one-horse 
shay.'  This  carriage  was  constructed  originally  on  an  ingenious 
principal,  so  that  every  part  should  be  just  as  strong  as  every 
other  part.  It  was  a  sort  of  infallible  chaise:  there  was  not  a 
weak  point  about  it;  it  never  seemed  any  the  worse  for  wear;  it 


APPARENT  SUCCESS  OF  TEE  EPISCOPAL  CEURCE.  81 

looked  as  if  it  would  last  forever.  But  on  one  occasion,  as  it 
was  being  driven  along  in  the  usual  fashion,  it  suddenly  collap- 
sed— into  dust.  I  am  afraid  that  may  be  an  emblem  of  what  is 
in  store  for  the  Church  of  England.  To  superficial  observers  she 
appears  prosperous  and  flourishing;  but  nevertheless  the  end 
may  be  near,  and  the  end  is  near,  unless  the  clergy  can  be 
awakened  to  a  sense  of  the  danger  before  it  is  too  late. 

"Institutions,  like  organisms,  must — if  they  would  survive — 
adapt  themselves  to  their  environment.  Want  of  adaptation  is 
death.  Human  society  is  constantly  changing,  in  its  modes  of 
thought,  in  its  experiences,  in  its  needs.  And  unless  the  church 
changes  correspondingly  she  will  be  destroyed — destroyed  by  the 
very  society  which  she  claims  to  mould.  But  the  clergy,  with 
few  exceptions,  persistently  refuses  to  recognize  this  necessity 
for  adaptation.  The  modern  priest,  as  a  rule,  expects  as  much 
credulity  on  the  part  of  his  devotees  as  did  the  old  medicine-men 
and  rain-makers.  He  talks  about  miracles — Gadarene  pigs  and 
what  not — as  he  might  have  done  at  a  time  vrhen  natural  law 
bad  never  been  heard  of;  when  every  one  believed,  not  in  the 
uniformity,  but  in  the  irregularity  of  nature.  He  talks  about 
inspiration  and  revelation  as  if  he  did  not  know  that  much  of  the 
teaching  of  the  Bible  had  been  equalled,  and  even  surpassed,  in 
other  sacred  literatures,  and  that  some  of  the  sayings  of  Christ 
Himself — including  even  the  golden  rule — had  been  anticipated 
by  'pagans'  hundreds  of  years  before  the  Christian  era.  The 
dogmas  of  orthodoxy  were  formulated  in  the  third  or  fourth 
century,  and  yet  he  goes  on  repeating  these  antiquated  shibbo- 
leths as  if  he  were  not  aware  that  since  the  days  of  St.  Augus- 
tine men's  views  of  the  universe,  and,  therefore,  of  the  God  of 
the  universe,  had  been  revolutionized.  Change  and  progress  are 
hateful  to  the  clerical  mind.  Instead  of  aiding  development,  the 
clergj''  have  eternally  hampered  and  opposed  it.  Instead  of  lead- 
ing the  race,  it  has  been  their  mournful  prerogative  to  lag 
behind.  The  majority  of  them  are  now  centuries  in  the  rear. 
And  the  consequence  is  that  men  are  beginning  to  ask  them- 


82  APPARENT  SUCCEaa  OF  THE  EPISCOPAL  CETJBCH. 

selves  if  they  might  not  dispense  with  the  'benefit  of  clergy,'  if 
they  would  not  be  better  off  without  a  church  than  with  it? 

A   DECLINING   MINISTRY. 

"The  influence  of  the  priesthood  is  everywhere  on  the  wane. 
Fashion,  no  doubt,  continues  to  lend  it  a  certain  precarious  sup- 
port. 

'At  church  on  Sunday  to  attend 

Will  serve  to  keep  the  world  your  friend.' 

But  going  to  church  is  no  longer  absolutely  indispensable.  The 
friendship  of  the  world  may  be  obtained  without  it.  Even  the 
'smart'  people  are  becoming  lax  in  their  religious  observances. 
I  remember  a  few  years  ago  it  was  proposed  in  convocation  to 
pass  a  resolution  condemning  'the  desecration  of  the  Sabbath,' 
which  was  then  becoming  so  common  in  society.  But  the  Bishop 
of  London,  with  touching  frankness,  said  that  they  might  as 
well  save  themselves  the  trouble,  as  nobody  would  pay  attention 
to  the  resolution  if  they  did  pass  it.  And  over  the  cultured  por- 
tion of  the  community  the  influence  of  the  Church  is  already 
almost  nil.  How  many  clever  persons  do  you  know  who  are  in 
the  habit  of  looking  to  their  clergymen  for  instruction?  Even 
the  scholarly  clergy — those  who  are  thoroughly  acquainted  with 
Hebrew  and  with  the  Fathers — even  they,  with  few  exceptions, 
are  quite  out  of  touch  with  modern  thought.  And  every  year 
their  ranks  are  recruited  from  a  lower  intellectual  class,  so  that 
the  small  amount  of  influence  which  the  clergy  still  retain  is 
continually  becoming  smaller. 

"For  the  last  thirty  or  forty  years  the  intellectual  attainments 
of  candidates  for  Orders  have  been  steadily  on  the  decline.  The 
Church  is  ceasing  to  attract  young  men  of  conspicuous  ability. 
At  the  English  universities  in  the  olden  times  the  best  men  usu- 
ally went  into  Orders;  but  what  was  formerly  the  rule  is  now 
the  exception.    This  is  a  fact  which  it  is  idle  to  attempt  ta  dis- 


APPABENT  SUCCESS  OF  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH.  83 

piite.  Every  student  at  Oxford  and  Cambridge  is  acquainted 
with  it.  It  can  be  proved  to  demonsitration  by  comparing  the 
ordination  lists  of  to-day  with  those  of  half  a  century  ago.  It 
has  been  acknowledged  and  deplored  by  the  Bishops  themselves. 
In  1861,  Dr.  Temple,  then  head-master  of  Rugby,  wrote  a  re- 
markable letter  to  Dr.  T'ait,  who  was  at  that  time  Bishop  of 
London.  This  letter  was  called  forth  by  the  fact  that  Dr.  Tem- 
ple, in  common  with  other  contributors  to  the  'Essays  and  Re- 
views,' had  been  severely  censured  by  the  Bishops  in  convoca- 
tion. 'Many  years  ago,'  he  said,  'your  lordship  urged  us  from 
the  university  pulpit  to  undertake  the  critical  study  of  the  Bible. 
You  said  it  was  a  dangerous  study,  but  indispeusable.  You  de- 
scribed its  difficulties,  and  those  who  listened  to  you  must  have 
felt  a  confidence  that,  if  they  took  your  advice,  you  at  any  rate 
would  never  join  in  treating  them  unjustly  if  their  study  had 
brought  with  it  the  difficulties  you  described.  To  tell  a  man  to 
study,  and  yet  bid  him  under  heavy  penalties  come  to  the  same 
conclusions  as  those  who  have  not  s-tudied,  is  to  mock  him.  If 
the  conclusions  are  prescribed  the  study  is  precluded.  Freedom 
plainly  implies  the  widest  possible  toleration.  I  admit  that  tole- 
ration must  have  limits,  or  the  church  would  fall  to  pieces.  But 
the  student  has  a  right  to  claim,  first,  that  those  limits  should  be 
known  beforehand  and  contained  in  formularies  within  his  own 
reach,  not  locked  up  in  the  breasts  of  certain  of  his  brethren; 
secondly,  that  his  having  transgressed  them  should  de  decided 
after  fair,  open  trial  by  men  practised  in  such  decisions.  Instead 
of  that  what  do  we  seeV  A  set  of  men  publish  a  book  contain- 
ing the  results  of  their  study  and  thought,  which — rightly  or 
wrongly — they  believe  to  be  within  the  limits  traced  out  by  the 
formularies.  Suddenly,  without  any  warning  that  they  are  on 
their  trail,  without  any  opportunity  given  for  explanation  or  de- 
fense, assuredly  without  any  proof  that  they  have  really  trans- 
gressed the  limits  prescribed,  the  whole  Bench  of  Bishops  join 
in  inflicting  a  severe  censure  and  in  insinuating  that  they  are 
dishonest  men.    How  on  earth  is  any  study  to  be  pursued  under 


84  APPARENT  SUCCESS  OF  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCS. 

such  treatment  as  this?  Yon  complain  that  young  men  of  abil- 
ity will  not  take  Orders.  How  can  you  expect  it  when  this  is 
what  befalls  any  one  who  does  not  think  as  you  do.* 

MR,    GLADSTONE. 

"The  fact  that  the  ablest  men  have  ceased  to  go  into  Orders 
received  a  curious  kind  of  indirect  confirmation  in  a  speech  made 
by  Mr.  Gladstone  at  the  Jubilee  of  Trinity  College,  Glenalmond, 
in  October,  1891.  'The  charge  that  the  clergy  are  falling  be- 
hind in  the  intellectual  race,'  he  said,  *I  believe  to  be  a  most  in- 
accurate, most  untrue,  and  most  unjust  aspersion.  You  may 
judge  of  the  character  of  a  body  in  part  by  the  names  of  those 
who  die  in  its  ranks.  I  will  name  five  men  who  have  died  in  tho 
ranks  of  the  British  clergy  within  the  last  two  years.  One  of 
these  was  Bishop  Lightfoot,  and  one  Dr.  Liddon;  one  was  Dean 
Church;  one  was  Archbishop  Magee;and  the  fifth,  a  much  young" 
er  man,  whose  fame  was  almost  entirely  confined  to  the  Uni- 
versity of  Oxford,  Mr.  Aubrey  Moore.  Now  I  say  that  body  is 
an  illustrious  body  from  whose  ranks,  within  less  than  two 
years,  five  such  men  can  be  numbered  as  having  ceased  to  be.' 
True.  But  to  know  whether  that  body  is  or  is  not  degenerating, 
we  must  inquire  by  whom  the  dead  are  to  be  succeeded.  The 
fact  that  the  English  army  was  once  led  by  a  Marlborough  and 
a  Wellington  would  not  ensure  for  it  victory  to-day.  And  since 
young  men  of  ability  are  no  longer  taking  Orders,  it  follows  that 
evenitually  there  will  be  no  worthy  successors  of  the  eminent 
clergymen  who  have  gone. 

"All  the  while  laymen  are  being  better  e<3ucated;  they  are 
reading  more  widely  and  thinking  more  deeply.  They  are  going 
up-hill  as  fast  as  the  clergy  are  going  down.  The  intellectual 
advances  of  the  laity  render  the  clergy  less  and  less  capable  of 
understanding  them,  so  that  the  want  of  adaptation  between 
society  and  the  church  is  ever  on  the  increase;  and  want  of 
adaptation  is  death.  There  is  no  possibility  of  evading  this  law. 
Ridicule  will  not  alter  it;  it  is  not  to  be  laughed  out  of  existence. 


APPARENT  SUCCESS  OF  THE  EPISCOPAL  CHURCH.  85 

Reasoning  will  not  change  it;  it  is  not  to  be  argued  away.  For 
a  while,  no  doubt,  it  may  be  ignored;  it  may  seemingly  be  dis- 
obeyed with  impunity;  but  the  effects  of  the  disobedience  are 
only  accumulating  for  a  more  terrible  catastrophe  in  the  end. 
Unless  the  Church  of  England  undergoes  a  radical  change,  she 
will  practically  cease  to  exist.  She  will  appeal  exclusively  to 
the  intellectual  dregs  of  the  community,  and  could  only  there- 
fore in  bitterest  irony  be  called  a  National  Church." 


CHAPTER    IX. 
The  Strength  of  Roman  Catholicism. 

Does  Roman  Catholicism  hold  to-day  any  possible  solution  for 
the  failure  of  Protestantism  in  New  York?  The  faithful  priest 
of  Rome  will  answer  as  a  matter  of  course  in  the  affirmative. 

For  my  own  part  I  gladly  grant  to  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
the  full  measure  of  praise  due  for  their  good  work  in  New  York. 
I  rejoice  in  much  they  have  done.  Before  we  look  at  the  painful 
facts  let  us  present  the  bright  ones. 

In  the  Roman  Catholic  Church  there  has  been  a  degree  of  pro- 
gress, a  revolutionary  change  of  front,  within  the  past  few  years, 
which  has  been  nothing  short  of  a  miracle.  We  are  profoundly 
interested  in  their  affairs,  Protestants  though  we  are. 

We  are  interested  because  they  represent  the  majority  of  the 
Christian  world,  numbering  Christian  nations  numerically.  The 
Roman  Catholics  embrace  isomething  like  200,000,000  of  the  in- 
habitants of  Christendom,  and  whatever  their  errors  in  the  past 
have  been  they  are  our  brethren  in  Christ.  Whatever  may  be 
the  gulf  that  separates  us  to-day  from  them,  the  development  of 
Christianity  in  the  future  v.'ill  have  no  history  that  will  not  have 
as  part  of  its  fundamental  development  the  story  of  this  great 
power,  which  we  have  called  the  Roman  Catholic  Church.  It 
has  stood  the  assault  of  centuries — the  ass'aults  of  men  within 
the  church  and  without. 

In  forming  an  estimate  of  other  religions  we  need  to  be  care- 
ful. All  religions  have  in  them  elements  of  the  divine.  Whether 
it  is  the  religion  of  the  savage  that  bows  down  before  a  miser- 
able image  in  the  heart  of  the  wilds  of  an  unexplored  forest, 
v/hether  the  Chinaman  before  his  idol  in  China,  or  the  Japanese 
in  Japan — wherever  you  find  man  looking  up  with  inquiring 
heart  after  God — you  are  walking  on  holy  ground,  and  there  will 


THE  STBEKQTR  OF  ROMAN  CATHOLICISM.         87 

be  found  imbedded  in  that  religion  a  something  that  you  must 
respect — something  of  the  divine.  It  is  a  fact  that  most  of  us 
have  our  denominational  differences  to-day  because  of  our  edu- 
cation. I  am  a  Baptist  because  my  father  was.  You  are  a  Me- 
thodist because  your  father  was.  IC  my  father  had  been  a  Ro- 
man Catholic,  I  have  not  the  slightest  doubt  I  would  be  a  Catho- 
lic to-day. 

THE   CATHOLICS  IN  AMERICA. 

We  are  interested  and  tremendously  so  in  the  development  of 
Catholicism  in  America  because  America  holds  in  one  sense  the 
key  to  history.  Mr.  Gladstone,  while  he  represents  the  high  mark 
of  English  liberalism, while  he  is  an  intense  Englishman  in  every- 
thing,says  that  the  next  century  is  to  place  the  crown  of  empire  of 
the  world  on  the  brow  of  America,  and  he  figures  out  that  you 
are  to  have  on  this  continent  365,000,000  of  inhabitants  at  the 
close  of  the  century  now  about  to  dawn  upon  us.  Whatever  we 
may  do  at  present  about  emigration,  we  are  destined  to  receive 
from  all  nations  of  the  earth  a  continued  stream  of  life,  seeking 
a  wider  and  freer  outlook. 

Is  the  Catholic  Church  in  America  to  be  an  enemy  to  be  crush- 
ed, or  can  it  be  made  an  ally  in  the  work  of  saving  the  world? 

In  forming  conditions  of  judgment  on  a  question  like  this  you 
must  take  the  sum  total  of  their  influence.  Bob  Burdette  gives 
an  illustration  of  the  wrong  tendency  in  this  direction  when  he 
commented  the  other  day  on  a  Unitarian's  report  of  the  religious 
condition  of  Japan.  The  Unitarian  said  that  when  he  asked  a 
Japanese  what  he  thought  of  the  converts  of  evangelical  church- 
es in  that  section  of  heathendom  he  replied  "with  a  meaning 
smile,"  Burdette  says,  "That  is  information  from  heaunuarters." 
If  you  want  to  find  out  about  Christian  converts  go  to  the  heath- 
en for  information.  If  you  want  to  find  out  about  the  Demo- 
cratic  party  ask  the  Republican.  If  you  want  to  find  out  about 
the  Methodists  go  to  the  Baptists.  If  you  want  to  find  out  the 
facts  about  a  man  straight  from  the  very  fountain  head,  always 


88         THE  STRENOTE  OF  B03IAN  CATHOLICISM. 

go  to  the  enemy  of  the  man  about  whom  you  want  your  infor- 
mation, and  you  are  certain  to  get  it.  It  would  not  be  fair  if  we 
consulted  only  those  sources  of  information  about  Catholicism. 
Fox's  book  of  Martyr's  has  doubtless  served  its  purpose  in 
freeing  the  human  conscience  from  the  tyranny  of  Rome.  But 
the  mild  insanity  that  identifies  the  scarlet  woman  of  the  Apoca- 
lypse with  the  Pope  of  Rome  surely  has  no  serious  mission  to 
perfonn  in  the  nineteenth  century. 

THE   NEW   CENSUS. 

The  census  of  1890  records  the  names  of  380,000  adherents  of 
the  Roman  Catholic  Church  in  New  York.  The  Christian  world 
should  rejoice  in  this  measure  of  success  in  any  church  in  a  city 
whose  dominant  spirit  is  hostile  to  all  religion. 

Nine-tenths  of  our  doctrinal  principles  are  identical  with  the 
Catholics;  the  one-tenth  on  which  we  differ  is  the  question  of 
ecclesiastical  machinery.  And  Rome  herself  is  coming  to  de- 
mocracy, and  when  she  agrees  to  the  great  fundamental  princi- 
ples of  a  democratic  government  in  the  State  she  will  come  at 
last  to  the  other,  for  the  State  yields  the  basis  on  which  the 
church  will  be  built  in  the  future. 

The  Church  of  Rome  in  this  city  is  doing  a  work  for  the  for- 
eign masses  we  are  not  doing.  This  town  could  not  be  held  from 
the  devil  for  twenty-fjur  hours  if  it  were  not  for  the  power  of 
the  Catholic  priesthood.  You  would  have  to  turn  your  guns  into 
these  streets  and  sweep  them  with  grape  and  canister  without 
them.  What  have  we  done  to  reach  these  people?  Nothing. 
What  are  we  going  to  do?  Nothing.  Who  are  doing  that  work? 
The  Jewish  rabbis  and  the  Catholic  priests.  If  they  do  not  do  it, 
it  is  not  done.  If  you  take  those  forces  away,  you  have  left  the 
people  absolutely  in  darkness.  If  that  is  a  fact,  we  must  recog- 
nize it,  and  that  these  forces  are  being  utilized  foe  good. 

I  admire  the  wisdom  and  skill  of  the  Catholic  priesthood.  They 
have  more  common  sense  than  Protestant  ministers.  They  are 
more  skillful.    They  have  longer  heads.    They  know  better  how 


THE  STRENGTH  OF  ROMAN  CATHOLICISM.         89 

to  grasp  and  hold  a  city.  Go  and  look  at  their  big  churches  here 
to-day.  In  my  Western  trips  the  biggest  churches  I  see  are  the 
Catholic  churches.  They  ^vere  the  first  in  the  town,  before  the 
other  denominations  thought  of  building,  and  the  priests  got  the 
lots  for  nothing,  too — long-beaded  men  that  look  far  into  the 
future  and  seize  their  opportunities  and  hold  on  to  them  forever. 
While  other  churches  lust  their  rights  to  title  in  this  city,  they 
had  the  sense  to  go  to  the  Legislature  and  have  their  titles  per- 
fected, while  we  were  asleep.  They  do  not  preach  on  Sunday 
and  say  to  the  people,  "You  can  go  to  the  devil  during  the  week." 
They  teach  their  people  that  what  they  preach  on  Sunday  is  to 
be  put  into  life  on  Monday,  and  the  priest  can  say  things  that 
have  great  power  and  influence  in  the  political  world.  If  Senator 
David  B.  Hill  said,  "Give  me  the  saloons,  and  you  can  have  the 
churches,"  he  was  talking  about  the  Protestant  churches,  not 
the  Catholic  Why?  Because  our  Protestant  churches  are  a 
disorganized  mob. 

CHRISTIA-N   IS   AS   CHRISTIAN   DOES. 

From  Catholicism  to-day  we  should  learn  the  concrete  annlica- 
tion  of  truth  in  everyday  life.  The  question  is,  in  fact,  what  a 
Christian  does,  not  whait  he  professes.  We  have  the  best  creed 
— the  creed  in  the  abstract — but  Christian  is  what  Christian 
does.  I  have  been  alarmed  about  some  things  in  the  Protestant 
world  as  I  watched  the  progress  of  Rome.  The  Pope  of  Rome 
has  showed,  in  this  age,  that  he  knows  the  drift  of  the  century; 
that  he  has  adjusted  the  whole  mac'iinery  of  Rome  to  that  drift, 
and  tha^t  he  has  felt  the  pulse  of  the  social  age;  that  the  masses 
are  going  to  rule  the  world,  and  he  is  going  to  be  the  friend  of 
the  masses,  and  rule  them.  If  you  are  going  to  keep  up  with 
Rome,  you  must  know  those  facts  as  thoroughly  as  the  Pope 
knows  them  to-day.  We  have  the  creed,  but  be  careful  that  you 
put  it  into  practice.  Practice  is  what  tells  in  the  Christian  world, 
not  paper  creeds  or  theory. 

Catholics  are  liberal  givers.    When  Dr.  McGlynn  was  turned 


90         TEE  STRENGTH  OF  ROMAN  CATHOLICISM, 

out  of  St.  Stephen's  Church,  the  collection  amounted  to  $2,500 
on  a  single  Sunday,  There  are  no  rich  people  in  that  parish — 
all  poor  people,  but  they  are  taught  to  give;  it  is  part  of  their 
religion  and  life.  If  a  Catholic  dies,  he  remembers  the  church. 
A  Presbyterian  died  the  other  day  in  New  York.  He  was  worth 
nearly  a  hundred  millions.  But  the  will  he  left  was  simply  this: 
''Lord  have  mercy  on  me  and  my  wife,  my  son  John  and  his  wife, 
we  four  and  no  more!    Amen." 

Inside  of  every  Protestant  denomination  there  are  powers  of 
wealth  concentrated  that  if  they  were  only  poured  into  the 
church,  as  Rome  has  her  wealth  poured  into  her  bosom,  what  a 
power  we  might  be  for  good!  Miss  Drexel  could  give  her  $8,000,- 
000  in  a  single  gift  to  educate  the  negroes  and  Indians,  and  we 
have  only  one  or  two  men  in  our  Protestant  world  that  seem 
alive  to  the  importance  of  the  salvation  of  a  world. 

Who  runs  the  hospitals  in  this  city  to-day?  The  Catholics. 
We  have  a  few  other  hospitals,  but  they  do  not  sum  up  in  the 
total.  We  have  been  mighty  on  creeds,  but  broken  down  when 
we  came  into  life.  Mighty  are  we  in  exploring  the  doctrine  of 
Pauline  faith,  but  when  we  came  to  the  parable  of  the  Good  Sa- 
maritan we  turned  that  over  to  the  Catholics,  whom  we  look 
down  on  with  suspicion. 

I  thank  God  to-day  for  the  indications  in  the  Catholic  world 
of  such  progress  as  we  see.  I  hail  it  with  rejoicing,  as  one  who 
loves  Jesus.  When  He  shall  reign  supreme  He  will  bring  many 
Catholics  and  many  Protestants  together.  When  that  time 
comes,  errors  that  now  are  strong  will  be  eliminated  in  the  pro- 
cess of  development,  and  God  will  bring  one  out  of  many. 


CHAPTER    X. 
The  Decay  of  Romanism. 

The  system  of  Romanism  can  hold  no  solution  of  the  religious 
problem  of  our  centres  of  life  in  America,  for  a  very  simple  rea- 
son. Its  decay  has  been  in  many  respects  more  serious  than  the 
failure  of  Protestantism, 

Max  Muller  has  declared,  as  the  result  of  a  life-study  of  all  re- 
ligions: "The  one  universal  characteristic  of  all  religions  is  de- 
cay." This  is  the  incontrovertible  testimony  of  history.  That  is 
to  say,  forms  die,  creeds  pass,  rites  and  systems  change,  yet  reli- 
gion remains  the  one  eternal  fact  of  humanity.  If  the  Apostles 
should  return  to  earth  to-day  and  enter  those  churehos  that  make 
the  loudest  boasts  of  being  "Apostolic,"  they  would  not  know 
how  to  behave.  They  would  be  lost  in  wonder  at  the  elaborate 
ritual  of  the  great  Roman  Catholic  and  Apostolic  Church.  The 
Apostle  Peter  would  be  utterly  at  sea  if  he  should  attempt  to 
join  in  a  high  mass  at  St.  Peter's,  Rome. 

Religion  expresses  itself  in  terms  of  the  knowledge  of  the  age. 
The  evolution  of  religion  is  a  simple  historic  fact.  In  no  two 
countries  of  the  human  race  does  the  religion  which  bears  the 
same  name  mean  the  same  thing.  This  is  so,  simply  because  the 
knowledge  of  the  race  grows  v/ith  each  succeeding  generation, 
and  the  expression  of  religion  must  adjust  itself  to  this  increase 
of  knowledge,  or  perish  in  the  resulting  conflict. 

IMPEEIAIilSM. 

Now  Romanism  cannot  possibly  hold  any  .solution  of  the  reli- 
gious problem  of  modern  New  York,  because  the  system  is  essen- 
tially ancient.  The  essence  of  Romanism  is  the  principle  of  im- 
perialism. This  principle  was  finally  crystallized  into  the  dogma 
of  Papal  Infallibility  in  1870.    Such  a  dogma  was  inevitable  and 


92  TRE  DEC  A  T  OF  ROMANISM. 

strictly  logical.  Imperialism  is  the  soil  of  the  Roman  system.  It 
always  has  been,  it  always  will  be.  When  Romanism  ceases  to 
be  imperialism,  it  ceases  to  be  Romanism.  The  present  Pope  of 
Rome  recently  made  overtures  to  the  P^nglish  Church  for  "Chris- 
tian Union."  When  an  official  of  the  Church  of  England  asked 
Cardinal  Vaughan,  the  Pope's  representative  in  England,  what 
must  be  the  basis  of  this  proposed  union,  the  Cardinal  promptly 
replied:  "Submission  to  the  supremacy  of  the  Pope."  No  other 
answer  could  have  been  given  without  Romanism  stultifying  the 
reason  for  its  existence. 

The  growth  and  the  decay  of  the  principle  of  Imperialism  is 
the  one  great  fact  tha>t  fills  tiie  v^olume  of  the  history  of  man  dur- 
ing the  3,000  years  of  our  historic  record.  No  one  doubts  that  the 
development  of  the  empire  of  the  imperial  ruler  above  the  petty 
tribal  kings  and  tyrants  was  a  vast  gain  for  the  human  race. 
Imperialism  had  its  part  to  play  in  the  evolutiou  of  the  civiliza- 
tion of  man.  But  the  climax  of  the  drama  of  empire  is  in  the 
past.  We  are  now  rapidly  approaching  the  day  of  the  triumph 
of  Democracy.    Empires  are  the  dung-heaps  now  out  of  which 

republics  grow. 

kome's  climax. 

The  system  of  Romanism  reached  its  highest  development  un- 
der Pope  Innocent  III.,  in  the  thirteenth  century.  It  held  its 
triumphant  splendor  for  a  hundred  years.  And  then  began  the 
decay  that  has  been  steady  and  inexorable  down  to  the  present 
hour.  This  period  of  imperial  splendor  is  followed  by  the  great 
scandal  of  the  three  Popes,  each  claiming  at  the  same  time  to  be 
the  only  vice-gerent  of  God  on  earth,  each  denouncing  the  other 
as  impostors  and  veritable  sons  of  hell!  This  disgrace  involved 
an  immediate  loss  of  prestige  and  power  to  the  Papacy,  from 
which  it  did  not  recover  and  never  has  recovered.  The  kings  and 
princes  of  Europe  made  haste  to  build  the  defences  to  their 
thrones  higher  and  stronger,  and  were  ever  afterward  able  to 
practically  dictate  their  own  terms  to  the  wearer  of  the  tiara. 
From  this  period  dates  the  beginning  of  the  emancipation  of  the 


TEE  DECAY  OF  ROMANISM.  93 

•'temporal"  from  the  "spiritual"  power.  And  here  begins  tho 
story  of  heresy  and  rebellion  within  the  fold.  In  the  foreground 
of  this  strange  scene  towers  the  colossal  figure  of  John  Wycliffe. 
They  dug  up  his  very  bones  and  burned  them  for  heresy,  and 
scattered  the  ashes  in  the  waters  of  a  brook,  that  they  might 
have  no  resting-place  on  the  earth.  The  brook  carried  them  to 
the  sea,  and  the  sea  carried  them  round  the  world,  and  circled 
the  earth  with  the  spirit  of  the  dead  martyr! 

The  next  blow  which  befell  the  imperialism  of  Rome  was  the 
pragmatic  sanction  in  France  which  guaranteed  the  French 
Church  a  practical  independence  of  the  central  power.  It  was 
the  beginning  of  Gallican  liberties  that  has  never  since  been 
abridged. 

Then  followed  the  statutes  of  Provisors,  of  Premunire  and  of 
Mortmain,  by  which  death-bed  bequests  and  many  other  rich 
sources  of  Roman  revenue  were  curtailed  or  abolished  in  Eng- 
land. These  laws  brought  great  financial  and  political  damage 
to  the  Papacy. 

DBATH-CKY   OF   A   GIANT. 

All  this  was  to  be  followed  by  the  thunder-peal  of  the  Refor- 
mation of  the  sixteenth  century,  under  the  leadership  of  Martin 
Luther.  One- half  of  Europe  joined  this  great  rebellion,  and 
when,  under  the  leadership  of  the  reactionist  enthusiasts  of  Loy- 
ola, Rome  had  recovered  Bavaria,  Bohemia,  Hungary  and  Bel- 
gium, the  storm  of  the  French  Revolution  burst  with  resistless 
fury.  Her  priests  were  butchered,  her  property  confiscated  or 
destroyed,  her  proud  dignitaries  hurled  to  the  dust,  and  the  very 
chair  of  the  Pope,  for  a  time,  shattered  into  splinters.  After  this 
storm  had  passed,  and  before  the  damages  could  be  repaired,  the 
Italian  rebellions  began  to  drench  Italy  in  blood.  One  by  one 
the  fair  provinces  of  the  Papal  power  were  wrested  from  the 
Vatican,  until  at  last  Victor  Emmanuel  sitood  before  the  walls 
of  Rome  with  united  Italy  at  his  back!  As  his  victorious  army 
sprung  over  the  falling  walls  of  the  Empire  of  the  Popes,  they 
were  followed  by  missionaries,  distributing  cart-loads  of  Pro- 


di  TEE  DECAY  OF  ROMANISM. 

testant  Bibles  to  the  populace  of  Rome.  There  are  to-day  25,000 
members  of  Protestant  Churches  in  Italy,  and  there  are  eleven 
of  their  churches  in  Rome  itself,  beneath  the  very  shadow  of  St. 
Peter's.  The  dogma  of  Papal  infallibility  was  promulgated  upon 
the  fall  of  Rome.  Of  course.  It  was  natural.  It  was  the  death- 
cry  of  a  giant.  It  meant  the  embalming  of  a  principle  that  had 
fought  its  life  out  and  died  in  the  last  ditch. 

The  cause  of  this  decay  is  not  far  to  seek.  The  decline  of  the 
power  of  Papal  Imperialism  has  been  coincident  with  the  growth 
of  the  principle  of  nationality.  As  England  grew  into  conscious 
power  as  a  nation  and  a  national  spirit  began  to  incarnate  itself 
in  her  citizenship  the  King  of  England  was  substituted  for  the 
Pope  of  Rome.  The  growth  of  the  French  nation  and  the  con- 
sciousness of  the  part  it  was  to  play  as  a  nation  in  human  history 
forced  from  the  Pope  the  concession  of  the  rights  of  the  Galilean 
Church.  The  growth  of  the  spirit  of  nationality  made  the  Ger- 
man people  with  their  temperament  the  inevitable  scene  of  the 
Reformation's  Prologue.  Rome  lost  Italy,  the  seat  of  her  August 
Empire  of  the  centuries,  because  the  principle  of  Imperialism 
collided  with  the  development  of  the  spirit  of  Italian  Nationality. 

AMEKICA   A   BOTTOMLESS   WHIKLPOOIi. 

Likewise,  in  America,  Romanism  collided  with  the  spirit  of 
American  nationality.  The  United  States  of  America  is  the  bot- 
tomless whirlpool  in  which  millions  of  Roman  Catholics  have 
poured  during  the  last  generation,  never  to  appear  again!  When 
they  have  reappeared  it  was  through  the  baptism  unto  the  new 
life  of  the  most  vigorous  nationalism  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
Henceforth  they  are  Americans!  They  are  as  dead  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  Roman  Imperialism,  Since  1820  we  have  received  about 
17,000,000  immigrants.  More  than  10,000,000  of  these  were  Ro- 
man Catholics,  and  yet  with  seventy  years  of  growth  and  most 
prolific  birth-rate  of  any  of  our  classes  of  people,  at  the  end  of 
this  period  Romanism  can  only  muster  about  7,000,000  nominal 
adherents,    counting    population,    men,    woonen    and    children. 


THE  DECAY  OF  ROMANISM.  95 

Oountin  the  children  born  of  Roman  Catholic  parentage,  the 
Catholics  have  lost  at  least  6,000,000  of  their  own  members  with- 
in the  past  two  generations.  It  is  no  answer  to  say  that  the 
church  has  grown  from  a  few  hundred  thousands  to  millions  in 
this  time.  The  point  is,  the  Catholic  population  of  this  nation  in 
1890,  by  the  Federal  census,  w^is  only  about  6,000,000.  It  ought 
to  have  been  12,000,000  if  they  could  only  have  held  their  own 
people. 

THEIB  DECAY  IN  NEW  YORK. 

Take  the  city  of  New  York  and  test  the  question.  The  foreign 
population  of  New  York — that  is,  foreign-born  and  the  children 
of  the  foreign-born,  is  eighty  per  cent,  of  the  total.  The  Catholic 
population  of  the  city  by  the  census  of  1890  is  380.000 — twenty 
per  cent.!  By  a  careful  examination  of  the  sources  of  our  immi- 
gration it  will  be  found  that  at  least  fifty-four  per  cent,  of  it  is 
Roman  Catholic.  This  should  give  the  Roman  Catholic  Church 
an  aggregate  of  972,000  in  New  York  City.  It  actually  is  only 
380,000,  showing  a  loss  in  New  York  alone  of  592,000!  Protes- 
tantism has  not  held  its  own  in  New  York.  The  record  of  Ro- 
man Catholicism  is  even  worse. 

Imperialism  coming  in  conflict  with  the  spirit  of  freedom  goes 
down  before  it.  Imperialism  commands  obedience.  Freedom 
invites  reason.  When  the  pent-up  manhood  of  the  Old  World 
Imperial  traditionalism  catches  the  spirit  of  American  nation- 
ality it  is  lost  forever  to  the  Roman  system.  The  conflict  with 
democracy  is  a  conflict  with  the  conquering  power  of  the  ages. 
The  claim  of  an  extraneous  mechanical  "Authority"  from  on 
high  has  been  the  secret  of  every  tyranny  that  has  ever  oppress- 
ed man.  Men  have  begun  to  see  this  clearly  at  last.  The  tyrants 
who  ruled  Egypt  claimed  divine  authority  to  rale  wrongly.  So 
the  rulers  of  ancient  India;  so  did  the  Caesars;  so  did  the  Bour- 
bons in  France  .  This  day  is  happily  past  in  the  history  of  the 
advanced  nations  of  the  world.  The  survival  of  the  Imperialism 
of  Rome,  even  in  its  attenuated  form  is  an  anachronism.  The 
rights  of  office  everywhere  yield  to  the  rights  of  man.    Trium- 


96  fHE  DECAY  OF  ROMANISM. 

pliant  Demos  conquers  the  world,  and  the  empire  is  but  the  pre- 
lude to  the  republic. 

Another  potent  cause  of  the  decay  of  Romanism  in  America 
is  the  loss  of  control  over  child  life,  incident  to  the  establishment 
and  maintenance  of  the  public  schools. 

CHILDHOOD    AND   KEUGION. 

Childhood  is  the  hour  of  religious  training.  It  is  the  real  basis 
of  all  the  differences  of  sect  and  cult.  Our  religious  bias  is  cre- 
ated for  us  in  the  growth  of  the  fibre  of  the  child  mind.  Even 
when  reason  has  developed  its  powers,  these  very  powers  will  be 
prostituted  to  the  defense  of,  rather  than  used  for,  the  destruc- 
tion of  that  bias.  Some  negroes  taught  my  little  boy  to  believe 
in  ghosts.  I  tried  to  clear  his  mind  of  this  superstition  when  he 
grew  a  little  older.  He  would  have  none  of  my  explanaitions.  I 
told  him  it  was  utterly  absurd;  that  there  was  no  such  thing  as 
a  ghost.  In  reply  he  asked  me  in  the  utmost  amazement: 
"What!  Don't  you  believe  any  ghosts?"  I  told  him  emphati- 
cally not. 

"What!"  he  exclaimed  with  deep  seriousness,  "Not  even  in  the 
Holy  Ghost?" 

Is  it  any  wonder  that  a  distinguished  Roman  Catholic  bishop 
should  say,  "Give  me  the  mind  of  a  child  until  he  is  seven  years 
old  and  you  can  have  him  the  rest  of  his  life."  This  is  peculiarly 
the  strength  and  the  weakness  of  the  Roman  system.  The  sac- 
erdotal conception  of  marriage,so  strongly  insisted  upon,is  based 
upon  the  absolute  necessity  of  controlling  the  offspring  of  the 
union.  The  institution  of  civic  marriage  was  a  blow  at  the  very 
heart  of  the  whole  scheme  of  Roman  Imperialism. 

THE   PUBLIC   SCHOOLS. 

The  energy  of  the  Roman  hierarchy  in  America  has  been  given 
to  the  school  problem  of  necessity.  As  the  adult  population 
from  the  Catholic  countries  of  the  Old  World  has  reached  Amer- 
ica, it  has  melted  by  millions  into  the  stream  of  American  na- 


THE  DECAY  OF  ROMANISM.  97 

tional  life  and  spirit  before  their  very  eyes.  And  the  priesthood 
has  been  utterly  powerless  to  prevent  this.  The  only  possible 
remedy  lay  in  the  training  of  the  child-mind  in  the  ideals  of  Im- 
perialism as  they  grew  in  power  in  the  native  air  of  the  freedom 
o-f  the  republic.  Hence  the  gigantic  effort  in  their  poverty  to 
build  a  complete  system  of  parochial  school  that  should  cripple, 
at  least,  the  influence  and  power  of  the  schools  of  the  republic. 
This  effort  has  been  only  partially  successful.  It  is  sure  to  fail 
completely  unless  the  hierarchy  shall  develop  within  the  imme- 
diate future  influence  sufficient  to  divide  the  funds  of  the  public 
treasury  and  obtain  State  support  of  their  sectarian  establish- 
ments. In  the  very  nature  of  the  republic,  such  an  effort,  seri- 
ously prosecuted,  would  mean  in  the  end  civil  war,  for  the  basis 
of  the  nation  to-day  is  its  system  of  universal  education  linked 
with  universal  suffrage. 

Romanism  in  America  has  therefore  received  its  most  serious 
blow  from  the  American  public  school. 

The  two  ideals  of  education  involved  are  utterly  irreconcilable. 
Tihey  cannot  live  on  the  same  soil. 

THE   PAKOCHIAL  XDEAL. 

What  is  the  ideal  of  Romanism?  If  I  understand  it — some- 
thing like  this:  The  supreme  importance  of  the  catechism,  above 
all  literature,  art,  science,  study,  culture,  abstract  or  profession- 
al. That  knowledge  is  a  dangerous  power  whose  sources  should 
be  guarded  by  the  sternest  repressive  measures  if  necessary,  that 
the  human  mind  shall  receive  only  that  which  is  approved  by 
duly  established  "authority."  That  Obedience  and  Innocence 
rather  than  Reason  and  Character  are  the  goals  of  culture. 
That  "secular  education,"  meaning  education  without  the  cate- 
chism, Is  immoral  and  injurious,  and  therefore  worse  than  igno- 
rance though  it  may  involve  the  grossest  superstitions. 

THE   STATE   IDEAL. 

Upon  the  other  hand  what  is  the  ideal  of  the  free  public  school? 
That  the  thing  of  supreme  importance  is  the  training  of  thr 


98  THE  DECAY  OF  ROMANISM. 

child's  mind  to  its  highest  possible  powers,  leaving  the  question 
of  religious  training  to  the  home  and  the  church.  That  know- 
ledge is  power  with  freedom  and  light.  That  men  are  free  only 
as  they  know  the  truth.  That  truth  is  an  attribute  of  God,  and 
to  teach  truth  is  to  teach  God.  That  therefore  all  the  education 
in  imparting  truth  is  of  itself  a  sacred  function.  That  truth  is 
the  one  authority  and  needs  no  indorsement  from  its  mechanical 
guardians  and  that  no  amount  of  "authority"  cau  make  a  lie 
true.  That  obedience  and  innocence  are  but  steps  in  the  growth 
of  man,  that  the  goal  of  life  is  Reason  and  Character.  That 
ignorance  is  itself  the  most  fertile  source  of  all  crime  and  im- 
morality. That  universal  education  is  an  absotute  necessity  to 
the  life  of  a  nation  whose  sovereignty  rests  on  universal  suff- 
rage, and  that  the  State  only,  is  able  and  willing  to  give  this  uni- 
versal culture  and  therefore  it  will  brook  no  rival. 

The  conflict  between  these  two  ideals  is  irrepressible.  They 
cannot  both  be  true.  They  cannot  both  survive  in  the  struggle 
of  our  national  life  to  incarnate  itself  in  its  perfected  form.  No 
man  whose  mind  is  unobscured  by  sectarian  fog  can  believe  for 
one  moment  that  the  State  will  now  yield  this  solemn  obligation 
to  defend  its  own  life.  No  church  is  Avilling  or  able  to  give  uni- 
versal education  to  a  people.  But  one  church,  the  Roman  Catho- 
lic, has  ever  had  the  opportunity  in  having  absolute  control  of 
the  whole  population  of  a  nation.  What  did  Rome  do  with  this 
opportunity?  Ask  the  republics  of  South  America  that  grope  in 
the  darkness  of  an  ignorance  well-nigh  universal.  Ask  France 
if  her  people  were  given  universal  culture  until  the  new  State 
undertook  it.  Ask  Spain  the  pioneer  of  New  Worlds  in  the  great 
centuries  of  the  past,  ever  faithful  to  Rome,  and  her  ignorant 
populace  will  not  be  slow  in  giving  an  emphatic  negative.  Ask 
Italy  the  mother  of  art  and  letters,  and  her  millions  of  ignorant 
people  in  their  stammering  answer  mock  the  glory  of  her  past. 

Tne  American  nation  is  bound  to  maintain  her  scheme  of  uni- 
versal culture  to  insure  her  internal  peace.  Our  task  is  an 
unique  one  in  history.    We  must  form  an  amalgam  of  all  the 


TEE  DECAY  OF  ROMANISM.  99 

sects,  cults,  creeds,  races,  and  nationalities  of  the  earth.  The 
public  school  is  the  patriotic  furnace  in  which  this  bleeding  of 
national  character  is  made.  Sectarian  schools  perpetuate  the 
prejudices  and  diiferences  of  our  people.  To  encourage  them 
even  w^uld  be  suicidal  for  the  state. 

THE    child's   BIKTHRIGHT. 

An  education  being  the  birthright  of  every  child  the  state  is 
the  only  power  clothed  with  authority  to  protect  the  child  from 
the  brute  instincts  of  unfaithful  parentage.  The  period  of  in- 
fancy in  man  is  the  longest  by  far  of  all  universal  life.  It  lasts 
about  twenty-one  j'ears.  This  prolonged  period  of  infancy  is  the 
basis  of  the  human  soul.  It  is  the  one  thing  that  differentiates 
man  from  the  animal  world  by  a  fathomless  chasm.  Here  lies 
the  secret  of  humanity.  The  fact  of  infancy  entitles  every  child 
to  training.  To  this  end  was  he  born  a  man  and  not  a  brute. 
The  state  must  guarantee  this  birthright  by  its  universal  and 
incontestible  power — no  parent  or  church  should  be  allowed  the 
right  to  infringe  upon  this  national  right,  abridge  or  destroy  it. 

If  you  would  know  the  future  of  this  nation  look  into  the  faces 
of  the  13,000,000  school  children.  The  state  that  could  abandon 
these  marching  hosts  of  posterity  to  the  whim  of  priest  or  private 
exploitation  would  be  guilty  of  high  treason  against  humanity. 

The  best  police  power  that  the  state  can  employ  is  knowledge 
and  true  culture.  Ignorance  is  the  fertile  mother  of  vice,  crime 
and  pauperism.  The  state  best  protects  itself  in  teaching  the 
truths  of  history,  economics,  sociology,  hygiene  and  philosophy. 

THE   STATE    ONLY   CAN   TEACH   HISTORY. 

The  free  brains  of  free  children  is  the  noblest  defense  with 
any  nation  ever  produced.  Invulnerable  and  united  within,  the 
nation  is  yet  to  be  born  who  could  conquer  them.  Republics  have 
fallen  because  their  citizenship  was  ignorant  and  in  their  igno- 
rance they  fell  an  easy  prey  to  demagogues  and  tyrants.  The 
public  schools  is  where  the  citizen  king  prepares  himself  for  his 


100  THE  DECAY  OF  ROMANISM. 

throne.  The  truth  only  can  make  a  man  free.  The  state  only 
can  teach  truth  without  sectarian  bias,  for  Ihe  state  in  exclusive 
of  all  sects  and  the  state  only  can  be  independent  in  the  state- 
ment of  the  truths  of  history.  Any  State,  which  undertakes 
that  solemn  duty  will  give  only  one  side  and  suppresses  the  other. 
Read  the  following  account  of  the  reign  of  the  Tudors  contained 
in  a  history  taught  in  Roman  Catholic  parochial  schools: 

"To  make  converts.  Catholicity  has  ever  appealed  to  reason; 
Protestantism,  like  Mohammedanism,  to  force  and  violence.  In 
England  and  Scotland  Protestantism  was  forced  upon  the  people 
by  fines,  imprisonment  and  death;  in  Germany  and  Prussia,  Swe- 
den and  Norway,  the  same.  In  America  the  Puritans  acted  in 
like  manner." 

Now  I  would  not  forget  the  infamies  of  Protestant  history. 
There  are  some  dark  pages  in  our  record.  There  were  bloody 
persecutions  in  the  Old  World — even  Martin  Luther  was  not 
guiltless.  John  Calvin  consented  to  the'  burning  of  Servetus. 
Our  Puritan  ancestors  in  New  England  fell  first  on  their  knees 
and  then  on  the  Aborigines,  and  afterwards  made  it  warm  for 
the  "witches."  Episcopalians  whipped  the  Baptist,  imprisoned 
and  banished  them  in  the  early  history  of  Virginia.  But  the 
trouble  with  this  remarkable  book  is  that  while  many  of  these 
facts  are  detailed  upon,  the- inexpressible  horrors  of  the  savage 
reign  of  "Bloody  Mary"  in  England  are  not  mentioned! 

And  how  utterly  false  is  the  statement  "Catholicity  has  ever 
appealed  to  reason."  Read  the  hellish  edict  under  which  Alva 
marched  into  the  Netherlands  in  1550  as  a  single  illustration. 

'"No  one,"  said  the  edict,  "shall  print,  write,  copy,  keep,  con- 
ceal, sell,  buy  or  give  in  churches,  streets,  or  other  places,  any 
book  or  writing  made  by  Martin  Luther,  John  Eoolampedius, 
Ulrich  Zwinglius,  Martin  Bucer,  John  Calvin,  or  other  heretics 

reprobated  by  the  Holy  Church; nor  break  nor  otherwise 

injure  the  images  of  the. Holy  Virgin  or  canonize  saints; 

nor  in  his  house  hold  conventicles  or  illegal  gatherings,  or  be 
present  at  such  in  which  the  adherents  of  the  above-mentioned 


THE'DECAY  OF  ROMANISM.  101 

heretics  teach,  baptize,  and  form  conspiraces  against  the  Holy 

Church  and  the  general  welfare Moreover,   we  forbid," 

continues  the  edict,  "all  lay  persons  to  converse  or  dispute  con- 
cerning the  Holy  Scripture,  openly  or  secretly,  especially  on  any 
doubtful  or  difficult  matter,  or  to  read,  teach,  or  expound  the 
Scriptures,  unless  they  have  duly  studied  theology  and  been 
approved  by  some  renowned  university; or  to  preach  se- 
cretly or  openly,  or  to  entertain  anj^  of  the  opinions  of  the  above- 
mentioned  heretics; on  pain,  should  any  one  be  found  to 

have  contravened  any  of  the  points  above-mentioned,  as  pertur- 
bators  of  our  state  and  of  the  general  quiet  to  be  punished  in  the 
following  manner." 

And  what  were  these  penalties  ?  The  men  were  to  die  by  the 
sword  and  the  women  to  be  buried  alive  if  they  should  recant 
and  did  not  persist  in  their  errors.  If  thpy  refused  to  recant  and 
persisted,  then  they  were  to  be  burned  alive,  and  all  their  prop- 
erty confiscated.  Any  one  who  failed  to  betray  a  suspective 
lodged  or  entertained  such,  or  furnished  with  food,  fire  or  cloth- 
ing, were  liable  to  the  same  fate. 

Armed  with  this  decree  of  hell,  Alva  marched  his  army  in  the 
Netherlands,  and  in  six  years  executed,  according  to  its  provi- 
sions, 18,000  human  beings,  besides  the  hosts  slain  in  battle!  No, 
it  will  not  do  to  allow  any  sect  to  teach  history.  The  state  only 
is  fit  to  take  the  child  by  the  hand,  lead  him  through  its  centuries 
of  darkness  and  tears  and  suffering,  and  teach  him  to  respect 
the  opinions  of  his  opponent,  and  in  due  humility  for  the  past, 
love  his  neighbor, while  he  differs  from  him  in  politics  or  religion. 

To  teach  history  is  to  trace  the  footprints  of  God  through  the 
centuries. 

To  teach  science  is  to  unfold  the  laws  of  God.  The  true  scien- 
tific teacher  is  filled  with  divme  enthusiasm.  It  is  said  that  Pro- 
fessor Farrar,  who  occupied  the  chair  of  natural  philosophy  at 
Harvard  University,  two-thirds  of  a  century  ago,  was  a  man 
possessed  of  this  enthusiasm  for  his  work  and  beloved  by  his 
pupils,  whom  he  inspired  with  something  of  his  own  spirit. 


102  THE  DECAY  OF  TtOMANISM. 

One  day  the  class  entered  the  lecture-room  and  found  the  pro- 
fessor walking  backwards  and  forwards,  with  kindled  eye  and 
working  face,  holding  a  ball  in  his  hands.  Presently  he  stopped 
and  confronted  the  class  and  exclaimed,  suiting  the  action  to  the 
w^ord : 

"I  toss  this  ball  into  the  air;  the  earth  rises  up  to  meet  it,  and 
the  stars  bow  down  to  do  it  reverence." 

The  teaching  of  philosophy  is  likewise  a  sacred  function. 
Thought  is  the  witness  of  God  in  man.  The  true  thinker  is  the 
only  true  Catholic.  In  thought  man  becomes  one  with  the  Infi- 
nite and  the  Universal. 

A   FATAL   COLIilSION. 

On  encountering  this  ideal  of  education  entrenched  in  the  very 
inner  fortress  of  the  government  of  the  United  States,  Roman- 
ism with  its  medieval  ideal  has  met  with  a  fatal  collision.  It  has 
encountered  an  absolutely  new  force  in  history.  It  has  collided 
with  the  van  guard  of  that  progress  of  the  century  that  is  to 
conquer  humanity  in  the  twentieth  century.  It  is  a  collision  with 
the  stars  in  their  courses,  with  light,  with  science,  with  history. 

What  are  some  of  the  results? 

The  practical  defeat  of  the  parochial  scheme  is  already  ac- 
knowledged by  the  wisest  of  the  hierarchy.  The  mission  of  ad- 
justment and  reconciliation  of  Satolli  in  America  means  this 
among  other  things.  Millions  of  hard-earned  dollars  of  Catholic 
money  have  been  sunk  in  weak  parochial  schools  that  must  per- 
ish before  the  advance  of  the  public  system,  unless  the  school 
fund  is  divided  in  the  interests  of  sectarianism.  Such  a  division 
cannot  be  accomplished  in  tbe  nation  without  a  civil  war.  It  is 
the  dream  of  a  fool. 

The  public  school  with  each  succeeding  year  becomes  more  and 
more  popular  witli  the  whole  people.  ITundreds  of  thousands  of 
the  most  intelligent  Catholics  are  its  warmest  supporters,  and  a 
truly  universal  education  is  the  certain  destiny  of  our  people. 
Romanism  as  a  system  has  lost  millions  of  adherents  in  this  lib- 


TEE  DECAY  OF  ROMANISM.  103 

eralizing,  bro-adening  process  of  thought  and  culture.  Their  peo- 
ple have  learned  to  think  for  themselves.  As  men  grow  to  con- 
scious power,  Obedience  must  yield  to  Reason.  I  command  my 
child  now,  but  soon  he  will  grow  into  the  consciousness  of  his 
own  freedom,  and  I  must  put  my  arms  about  his  and  say,  "Come 
my  boy,  let  us  reason  together."  In  the  childhood  of  the  race 
the  official  church  might  command  with  good  results  for  untu- 
tored man.  But  the  race  draws  near  to  its  conscious  powers  of  a 
full  grown  manhood.    Command  must  yield  to  persuasion. 

The  day  of  authority  for  truth  is  gone.    The  day  of  truth  only 
for  authority  is  here. 


CHAPTER    XI. 
Goody^Goodism  and  the  Scourge  of  Christ. 

The  corruption  of  the  modern  city  is  a  th^at  ag-ainst  the  foun- 
dations of  social  order..  The  municipal  record  of  New  York  dur- 
ing the  past  thirty  years  has  been  a  nightmare  of  civilization. 
But  it  has  not  disturbed  the  slumber  of  the  Protestant  churches. 
It  has  not  even  disturbed  seriously  its  individual  ministers  until 
the  last  few  years.  The  Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  in  New  York  has 
been  weakly  and  ineffectually  presented  because  it  has  not  been 
preached  in  its  fullness  and  power.  Jesus  Christ,  on  one  occa- 
sion in  His  life,  took  a  scourge  of  cords  and  cast  out  of  the  Tem- 
ple the  sheep  and  the  oxen,  poured  out  the  changer's  money  and 
overturned  their  tables.  This  is  a  most  remarkable  scene  in  the 
history  of  the  ministry  of  Christ.  It  is  a  scene  in  which  we  be- 
hold the  indignation  of  Jesus.  So  vigorous  is  this  expression 
.that  the  result  is  physical  violence.  To  some  minds  of  to-day 
such  a  scene  in  the  life  of  Jesus  is  an  impossibility.  They  refuse 
to  believe  in  such  a  Christ,  and  these  are  the  people  who  insist 
that  they  have  the  last  word  from  Christ  to  the  world.  The 
trouble  is  that  they  have  looked  only  at  one  aspect  of  the  life  of 
Jesus.  He  is  gentle,  He  is  loving.  He  is  tender.  He  weeps,  and 
yet  deliberately  makes  a  scourge  of  cords  and  with  physical  vio- 
lence drives  from  the  Temple  those  who  were  desecrating  His 
Father's  house  and  with  physical  violence  overturns  their  tables. 
Christ  is  Christianity.    Jesus  said,  "I  am  the  way." 

What  does  this  scene  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  directly  in  the  line  of 
His  ministry,  teach? 

Certainly  two  things. 

There  is  an  hour  for  Christianity  to  wield  the  lash  and  use  the 
knife.    There  is  a  time,  in  other  words,  for  all  things.    There  is 


GOODT-GOODISM  AND   THE  SCOTlRGE  OF  CHBIST.    105 

a  time  for  gentleness  and  lenderness  and  love.  There  is  a  time 
for  wrath  and  indignation  and  for  overturning.  There  is  a  time 
to  laugh,  there  is  a  time  to  weep;  there  is  a  time  to  sing,  a  time 
to  pray,  a  time  to  fight.  The  music  of  life  is  not  made  on  a  single 
string.  There  are  other  elements  than  the  gentle  and  soothing, 
which  enter  into  the  essentials  of  a  rounded,  active  life.  It  is  so 
in  the  individual,  in  society  and  in  the  church. 

In  the  life  of  every  man  there  are  times  for  tenderness  and 
love;  there  are  times  for  the  assertion  of  the  sterner  elements  of 
life  and  the  assertion  of  wrath  and  indignation  at  the  proper 
time,  as  essential  to  the  world's  welfare,  to  the  salvation  and 
happiness  of  mankind,  as  the  introduction  and  maintenance  of 
the  gentler  and  sweeter  elements.  No  man  can  live  a  normal 
life  in  this  world  and  do  his  duty,  endowed  even  with  moderate 
talents,  without  being  confronted  with  hours  in  which  the  soul 
must  rise  in  all  the  power  of  righteous  indignation  and  assert  in 
all  their  elemental  power  the  forces  of  anger  and  of  war. 

A  TIME   FOE   RIGHTEOUS    WKATH. 

In  the  life  of  society  there  are  times  when  the  community 
must  rise  in  indignation  and  rid  itself  of  pestilence.  There  are 
times  in  the  life  of  a  community  in  which  the  seeds  of  joy  and 
of  love  and  of  gentleness  can  be  sowed  and  cultivated.  But 
there  are  hours  when,  with  flame  and  axe  those  who  have  the 
good  of  society  at  heart  must  go  forth  and  burn  and  strike  down 
and  remove  if  the  people  are  to  be  saved  from  contagion  and 
death.  So  in  the  history  of  the  church  there  are  hours  in  which 
the  gospel  of  joy  and  of  peace  and  of  loving  kindness  is  preach- 
ed and  should  be  preached,  and  there  are  other  hours  in  which 
the  wrath  and  indignation  of  truth  and  Christ  must  be  preached. 
It  is  useless  to  say  that  in  such  an  hour  light  will  overcome  dark- 
ness,gentleness  will  overcome  violence.  Jesus  Christ  did  not  find 
it  so.  His  disciples  would  do  well  to  follow  Him.  There  have  been 
hours  in  almost  every  century  of  the  history  of  the  church  in 
which  there  was  absolute  call  for  righteous  wrath,  and  when 


106    GOODY-GOODISM  AND   THE  SCOUBGE  OF  CHRIST. 

only  such  forces  were  adequate  to  the  salvation  of  the  church 
and  of  the  people  . 

What  could  have  saved  the  church  in  the  days  of  Martin  Lu- 
ther save  the  violence  which  resulted  in  the  Protestant  estab- 
lishment and  in  the  purification  of  the  Catholic  Church?  There 
could  be  no  compromise  with  the  corruption  that  had  grown  up 
within  the  body  of  Romtin  Catholicism.  Totzel,  the  chief  expo- 
nent of  the  doctrine  of  indulgence,  preached  in  the  ear  of  Luther. 
"Indulgences,"  said  he,  "are  the  most  precious  land  sublime  of 
God's  gifts.  This  cross  (pointing  to  the  red  cross)  has  as  much 
efficacy  as  the  cross  of  Jesus  Christ.  Draw  near,  and  I  will  give 
you  letters  duly  sealed  by  which  even  the  sins  you  shall  here- 
after desire  to  commit  shall  be  forgiven  you.  I  would  not  ex- 
change my  privileges  for  those  of  St.  Peter  in  heaven,  for  I  have 
saved  more  souls  with  my  indulgences  than  he  with  his  sermons. 
There  is  no  sin  so  great  that  the  indulgence  cannot  reach  it.  Let 
him  only  pay  largely,  and  it  shall  be  forgiven  him.  Even  repent- 
ance is  not  indispensable." 

If  any  man  doubts  that  this  be  a  true  statement  of  the  preach- 
ing of  a  duly  accredited  delegate  from  the  highest  Catholic  au- 
thority in  his  age,  let  him  refer  to  the  words  of  Pope  Adrian, 
successor  to  Leo  X.,  cro\^ned  in  1522,  when  Germany  was  ablaze 
with  Lutheranism.  Through  his  legate  the  Pope  declared  at  the 
diet  of  Nuremberg,  summoned  to  deal  with  Luther,  that  "these 
disorders  had  sprung  from  the  sins  of  men,  more  especially  from 
the  sins  of  priests  and  prelates.  Even  in  the  holy  chair,"  said  he, 
"many  horrible  crimes  have  been  committed.  The  contagious 
disease,  spreading  from  the  head  to  the  members,  from  the  Pope 
to  lesser  prelates,  has  spread  far  and  wide,  so  that  scarcely  any 
one  is  found  who  does  right  and  is  free  from  infection."  Con- 
fronted with  such  a  situation,  can  say  sane  man  maintain  that 
it  was  the  duty  of  Martin  Luther  to  remain  quiet  and  to  preach 
the  simple  gospel  of  love  and  gentleness,of  good  feeling  to  friends 
and  enemies  inside  the  church  and  outside?  No;  there  was  an 
hour  in  which  the  honest  soul  of  the  reformer  cried  in  hot  indig- 


GOOBT-GOODISM  AND   THE  SCOUBGE  OF  CHRIST.    107 

nation,  "In  the  name  of  Jesus,  I  will  endure  it  no  longer!"  and 
the  issue  of  battle  was  joined.  There  is  a  time  to  pray.  There 
is  a  time  to  fight. 

THE  TEKEOES  OF  DEVOTED  LOVE. 

True  love  in  Christ  has  its  terrible  hoars  in  such  a  world. 
There  are  aspects  of  love  beyond  the  mere  expression  of  tender- 
ness and  of  kindly  feeling.  Love  has  its  hours  of  the  terrible 
and  of  the  sublime,  when  death  is  preferable  to  dishonor,  and 
when  violence  is  to  be  desired  above  the  baser  things  that  come 
with  submission.  A  Yirginius  could  kill  his  own  child  for  love's 
sake,  and  we  cannot  say  that  the  awful  deed  of  such  a  father 
transcended  the  limits  of  the  real  expression  of  a  father's  love. 
Let  us  remember  that  Jesus  was  not  only  capable  of  anger,  but 
that  He  was  angry.  If  this  be  so,  love  living  in  this  world  must 
be  confronted  with  hours  in  which  wrath  and  indignation  rule 
supreme.  It  cannot  be  otherwise.  The  love  which  filled  the  soul 
of  Christ  was  a  consuming  fire,  and  before  it  evil  must  be  burned 
up. 

We  are  told  that  His  baptism  was  the  baptism  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  and  of  fire.  Upon  more  than  one  occasion  in  His  life  we 
are  told  that  He  was  angry.  He  said  Himself  that  He  came  to 
bring  not  peace,  but  a  sword.  Such  scenes  in  the  life  of  Jesus, 
such  utterances  from  his  lips,  cannot  be  reconciled  with  the  sen- 
timental slush  of  a  certain  school  of  Christianity  which  contin- 
ues to  cry  "peace,  peace,"  when  there  is  no  peace,  when  there 
can  be  no  peace  with  the  forces  of  hell.  There  is  a  large  amount 
of  unadulterated  hypocrisy  in  the  cry  for  the  gentleness  of  the 
Gospel  in  this  hour.  It  will  be  found  in  scores  of  cases  to  ema- 
nate from  men  who  hate  the  Gospel  of  Christ  with  all  their  soul 
and  who  cry  for  the  gentleness  and  its  sweetness  because  they 
feel  the  touch  of  the  sword  of  Christ,  of  His  truth  and  His  in- 
dignation and  His  anger  in  their  inmost  souls. 

Jesus  sacrificed  Himself.  Christianity  means  the  sacrifice  of 
self.    If  we  would  be  the  disciples  of  Christ,  we  must  be  willing 


108    O00DY-GO0DI8M  AND   TEE  SCOUIiGE  OF  CUBIST. 

to  sacrifice  self.  The  man  who  sacrifices  himself  must  displease 
the  selfish.  It  is  an  arraignment  of  them  and  of  their  life.  One 
of  the  most  difficult  sacrifices  for  the  follower  of  Christ  to  make 
to-day  is  to  count  his  reputation  as  nothing  for  Christ's  sake;  is 
to  be  willing  to  he  hissed  and  cursed  and  spit  on  by  the  people. 
The  most  difiicult  sacrifice  which  Christianity  demands  of  its 
followers  to-day  is  that  they  be  willing  to  be  unpopular.  It  is  an 
easy  thing  to  pander  to  a  vitiated  public  sentiment.  It  is  an  easy 
thing  to  sell  one's  soul  for  this  cheap  applause.  The  follower  of 
Chrisit  who  does  it  has  betrayed  his  Master,  has  belied  his  pro- 
fession and  is  untrue  to  the  first  principles  of  his  life — 'the  sacri- 
fice of  self. 

The  world  hated  Jesus  Christ.  He  was  not  a  popular  preacher 
in  the  sense  that  he  pleased  the  powers  that  rule  society.  It  is 
impossible  for  any  man  to  live  a  true  Christian  life  in  this  world, 
following  Jesus  in  spirit  and  in  truth  and  not  be  hated.  Jesus 
says  it  Himself  in  so  many  words.  Hear  Him:  "If  ye  were  of 
the  world,  the  world  would  love  its  own.  But  because  ye  are 
not  of  the  world,  but  I  chose  you  out  of  the  world,  therefore  the 
world  hateth  you.  They  persecuted  me.  They  will  also  perse- 
cute you.  Yea,  the  hour  cometh  that  whosoever  killeth  you  shall 
think  he  offereth  service  unto  God." 

THE   SWOED   OF   CHKISTIANITY. 

There  is  and  there  must  be  of  necessity  a  point  of  contact  with 
evil  at  which  Christianity  bursts  into  a  consuming  flame.  The 
Christianity,  incapable  of  such  a  consummation, of  such  violence, 
if  you  please,is  dead, not  living.  Nor  is  this  in  any  wise  inconsist- 
ent with  the  highest  conception  of  Jesus.  In  His  personality 
was  blended  the  tenderest,  the  divinest  love,  with  all  the  ele- 
ments of  sternest,  moral  warfare.  We  see  these  elements  com- 
bined frequently  in  the  character  of  the  stern  warrior.  Prince 
Henry,  the  brother  of  Frederick  the  Great,  King  of  Prussia, 
leads  his  army  through  Saxony,  upon  mission  of  death,  and  yet 


GOODT-GOODISM  AND   THE  SCOURGE  OF  CHRIST.    109 

he  is  careful  of  every  field  of  grain.  If  a  soldier  stepped  out  of 
the  direct  road,  the  captain  was  punished. 

One  day  in  the  harvest  season  the  prince  saw  the  peasants 
hurrying  to  save  their  crops  from  an  approaching  storm.  Im- 
mediately he  had  every  horse  taken  from  the  baggage  wagons 
and  sent  to  the  assistance  of  the  farmers,  who  were  amazed  at 
this  sympathy  from  a  great  general  and  an  enemy.  On  one  oc- 
casion 300  French  otficers  were  taken  prisoners  and  brought  be- 
fore him.  He  was  indignant  that  they  had  been  deprived  of  their 
swords  and  restored  them  at  once.  The  wounded  among  the 
prisoners  he  cared  for  as  carefully  as  if  they  belonged  to  his  own 
army.  When  he  learned  that  fifty  of  them  were  without  money, 
he  provided  for  them  from  his  own  purse,  and  at  considerable 
inconvenience  to  himself.  It  is  possible  to  fight  for  principle  and 
truth  and  right,  and  in  the  very  battle  seek  the  salvation  of  those 
against  whom  we  fight. 

And  after  these  wars  for  righteous  principles  it  happens,  again 
and  again  in  the  history  of  the  world,  that  those  against  whom 
we  fight  are  brought  to  see  that  they  were  wrong,  and  that  the 
battle  was  for  their  own  good,  even  though  they  were  blind  and 
could  not  see  it  .  We  have  a  most  striking  example  of  this  re- 
sult in  a  remarkable  confession  made  by  Arabi  Pasha,  the  Egypt 
patriot.  Twelve  years  ago  he  was  the  most  powerful  man  in 
Egypt.  He  headed  a  rebellion,  nominally,  against  the  Khedive, 
but  which  Arabi  insisted  was  really  on  the  Khedive's  behalf. 
He  desired,  he  said,  to  deliver  Egypt  from  foreign  domination 
and  preserve  her  for  the  Egyptians.  He  made  a  brave  and  des- 
perate fight,  but  he  was  beaten,  and  has  since  been  living  in  re- 
tirement in  Ceylon.  He  declares  that  his  interest  in  Egypt  and 
love  for  his  country,  are  as  intense  as  ever.  He  declared  re- 
cently that  his  whole  life  had  been  a  mistake.  He  regretted  op- 
'  posing  the  English  occupation  of  Egypt.  He  declared  that  he 
had  found  the  English  had  done  for  his  country  what  he  had 
hoped  to  do,  but  could  never  have  succeeded  in  doing. 

"Not  one  of  her  own  sons,"  said  Arabi,  "could  have  given 


110    QOODT-aOODISM  AND  TEE  SCOURGE  OF  CEBIST. 

Egypt  the  release  from  oppression  and  injustice  and  the  good 
government  which  she  now  enjoys.  All  that  I  have  fought  and 
struggled  to  attain  is  accomplished.  In  my  blindness  I  was 
resisting  the  surest  means  of  achieving  my  own  aims.  I  was 
fighting  for  the  liberation  of  my  country.  I  am  sorry  now  I  did 
so,  and  I  am  glad  for  my  country's  sake  I  was  defeated."  So  the 
men  against  whom  Christianity  wages  its  righteous  war  will  in 
the  end  rejoice  in  their  own  defeat.  Such  a  war  is  waged  against 
them,  not  because  we  hate  them,  but  because  we  love  them. 

THE   POLLUTION   OF   MODEKN   CITIES. 

So  to-day  the  church  of  Christ  in  our  centres  of  civic  life  is 
confronted  with  just  such  a  crisis.  The  hour  has  come  for  right- 
eous indignation.  It  is  the  hour  for  righteous  wrath  and  for  the 
action — yes,  the  violence  of  the  Christ  under  the  influence  of  that 
wrath.    This  is  so: — 

Because  of  the  tremendous  growth  and  importance  of  these 
great  modern  centres  of  life.  The  city  is  the  heart  of  modern 
civilization.  It  is  the  key  to  the  century.  It  is  the  key  to  the 
future.  The  past  fifty  years  have  seen  the  city  grow  to  domi- 
nate the  world.  It  has  drained  the  life  from  the  rural  districts 
and  concentrated  it  at  these  nerve  centres  of  the  world.  Here 
civilization  has  massed  its  numbers.  The  cities  of  the  ancient 
world,  before  the  fall  of  that  world,  were  insignificant  in  com- 
parison with  the  giant  cities  of  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. 

Imperial  Rome,  mistress  of  the  ancient  world,  was  a  pigmy 
beside  Lrondon,  the  capital  of  the  modern  world.  And  London 
of  to-day  is  but  a  faint  prophecy  of  what  will  be  the  London  of 
the  close  of  the  twentieth  century,at  the  present  rate  of  progress. 
Here  in  the  city  is  concentrated  the  wealth  of  the  nation,  the 
wealth  of  the  world.  Money,  and  all  the  power  of  money,  and 
all  that  money  means  to  society,  to  commerce,  to  politics,  to  the 
masses,  to  the  race,  are  to  be  settled  here.  The  influence  of  the 
city  is  now  absolutely  supreme  as  the  governing  power.  The  city 


600DY-G00DISM  AND   THE  SCOURGE  OF  CHRIST.    Ill 

governs  our  politics,  state  and  national.  The  city  governs  the 
commerce  of  the  world,  national  and  international.  The  city 
governs  the  formation  of  the  social  structure;  it  governs  fash- 
ions; it  rules  literature;  it  controls  the  press;  it  makes  the  atmos- 
phere which  those  who  rule  the  nation  breathe. 

While  the  growth  and  importance  of  the  city  have  been  thus 
overwhelming  and  continuous  to  increase  with  incredible  swift- 
ness, it  is  precisely  in  the  city  that  the  failure  of  the  church  has 
been  most  pitiful.  Taking  the  modern  world  as  a  whole,  Chris- 
tianity has  made  remarkable  progress  within  the  past  quarter  of 
a  century.  In  America  Christianity  has  advanced  with  rapid 
strides,  taking  the  country  as  a  whole.  We  have  enrolled  20,- 
000,000  adherents  in  the  United  States.  We  have  thousands  of 
churches.  We  are  building  thousands  of  new  ones  every  year. 
Church  membership  has  increased  in  larger  proportion  than  the 
population.  Christianity  is  triumphant  along  the  line,  reckoning 
things  in  their  total. 

Our  progress  in  the  heathen  world  has  been  miraculous. 
Closed  gates  have  opened  wide.  Nations  have  been  baptized  in 
a  day.  The  ports  of  the  earth  are  now  open  to  the  Christian 
missionary,  and  their  triumphs  have  been  miraculous.  But  here 
our  boast  must  end,  and  our  sorrow  begin.  This  increase  has 
been  in  the  small  towns.  It  has  been  in  the  country.  In  the  city 
we  have  not  only  failed  to  increase,  but  Christianity  has  percep- 
tibly declined  in  its  organic  life  within  the  past  generation. 

HEATHENISM   IN   OUE   CITIES. 

The  old  Twentieth  Assembly  District  in  New  York  had  a  pop- 
ulation of  60,000  and  there  were  three  little  Protestant  churches. 
In  the  whole  nation  for  every  60,000  there  are  120  Evangelical 
churches.  But  there  is  one  district  in  New  York  with  50,000 
souls  in  which  there  is  one  Protestant  Church.  In  the  heart  of 
Chicago  there  are  60,000  people,  it  is  said,  without  a  single 
church,  either  Protestant  or  Catholic.  In  six  assembly  districts 
of  New  York  there  is  a  population  of  360,000  people,  for  which 


112    GOODY-GOODISM  AND  THE  SCOURGE  OF  CHRIST. 

there  are  31  Protestant  churches,  and  3,018  saloons.  The  whole 
country  east  of  the  Mississippi  shows  that  there  are  as  many 
churches  as  saloons,  and  yet  for  this  population  in  New  York, 
larger  than  the  city  of  Cincinnati,  there  are  100  times  as  many 
saloons  as  churches.  The  First  Assembly  District  of  New  York 
in  1880  had  44,000  people,  7  Protestant  Churches,  and  1,072  sa- 
loons— 153  saloons  for  every  church. 

Nor  does  this  failure  of  church  life  simply  apply  to  Protestan- 
tism. Our  Jewish  population  has  become  atheistic  and  have 
deserted  their  synagogues  by  thousands.  At  an  Ingersoll  lecture 
one-half  the  audience  will  be  found  composed  of  Jews,  and  it  is 
a  remarkable  fact  that  sometimes  whole  families  will  be  found 
at  these  Sabbath  entertainments  over  which  the  distinguished 
Colonel  presides. 

The  truth  is  the  city  of  to-day,  the  modern  city,  whether  in  the 
East  or  in  the  West,  is  a  hell,  in  which  the  manhood  of  the  na- 
tion is  daily  being  consumed.  Ma4;erialism  is  rampant.  The  god 
of  the  city  is  the  god  of  mammon.  More  and  more  have  the 
stong  fallen  into  this  fetich  worship.  Their  motto  is  *'Money, 
by  all  means,  by  any  means,  fair  or  foul."  The  hot  breath  of 
this  scourge  soon  burns  out  the  ideals,  the  faiths,  the  hopes  and 
the  love  born  into  the  heart  of  man  under  normal  conditions. 
The  sum  total  of  the  forces  that  affect  life  in  our  cities  to-day  is 
overwhelmingly  against  the  development  of  a  righteous  charac- 
ter. The  pressure  of  work  is  insane.  Men  are  in  a  fever.  They 
do  not  stop  to  think.  Things  high  and  holy  and  noble  are  brushed 
aside  in  the  mad  scramble  of  the  modern  business  world.  Men 
are  driven  to  such  an  intense  speed  that  the  moral  point  of  view 
is  lost.  The  reaction  from  this  results  in  dissipation  rather  than 
amusement. 

In  the  reaction  from  this  debauchery  of  body  and  soul  sane 
amusement  seems  almost  an  impossibility;  hence  the  degrada- 
tion of  our  amusements  in  the  cities  to-day.  Oui*  theatres  wal- 
low in  filth.  They  pander  to  the  gutter.  They  pander  to  the 
Bowery.    They  pander  to  the  vicious  in  high  society  and  in  low 


GOODY-OOODISM  AND  THE  SCOURGE  OF  CHRIST.    113 

society,  and  there  is  scarcely  an  exception.  Gambling  is  ram- 
pant and  opens  its  thousand  doors  to  allare  the  young  and  to 
absolutely  destroy.  In  this  pressure  of  life  the  social  evil  is  in- 
tensified. Womanhood  in  degradation  becomes  a  power  for  evil. 
Saloons  have  multiplied  not  only  in  numbers,  but  in  their  power 
for  evil,  in  their  attractions,  until  it  is  next  to  impossible  for  a 
man  with  honest  intentions  in  the  lower  walks  of  life  to  live  in 
a  modern  city  and  keep  out  of  these  hell-holes. 

VILE  LITEKATUKE   IN   OUB   CITIES. 

The  reading  matter  which  is  provided  for  this  population  is 
of  the  most  degraded  character.  It  is  thrust  under  the  nose  of 
the  passing  crowd.  It  is  nailed  upon  the  bulletins  in  glaring  col- 
ors. It  is  circulated  among  the  young  and  the  foolish,  the  igno- 
rant and  the  thoughtless,  to  bear  its  fruit  of  death  from  day  to 
day. 

The  influence  in  the  higher  circles  of  society  is  irrational, mate- 
rialistic, and  tends  to  destroy  reverence,  faith  and  the  stability 
of  home  and  home  ideals.  The  people  in  our  cities  live  in  tene- 
ments, live  in  overcrowded  hovels,  in  which  dogs  and  hogs  could 
not  breathe,  and  exist  through  many  generations.  It  is  simply 
a  physical  impossibility  for  rational  manhood  and  womanhood 
to  be  born  and  reared  in  such  houses,  in  such  streets,  and  under 
such  conditions  as  exist  in  our  modern  cities.  This  fact  is  shown 
in  the  deterioration  of  the  working  people. 

It  was  found  recently  in  London  by  an  investigation,  that  the 
"submerged  tenth"  of  the  population  was  not  the  rural  popula- 
tion, which  had  come  into  London,but  it  was  the  population  born 
in  London  under  modern  conditions.  The  countrymen  who  come 
in  to  fill  the  lower  walks  of  life  in  our  cities  contain  enough  vig- 
orous blood  to  fight  their  way  over  the  bodies  of  the  weaker  men 
and  women  of  the  city.  Official  corruption  grows  apace  in  such 
a  life.  In  the  midst  of  this  the  church  is  corrupted  by  the  power 
of  the  rich  and  conservative,  and  is  asleep  with  its  traditions. 

I  am  not  a  pessimist.    I  do  not  believe  in  the  triumph  of  evil. 


114    G00DY-G00DI8M  AND  THE  SCOURGE  OF  CHRIST. 

I  have  not  drawn  this  dark  picture  because  I  am  in  despair,  but 
we  must  face  the  fact.  The  city  to-day  is  destroying  the  charac- 
ter and  the  manhood  of  the  nation.  The  modern  city  as  at  pres- 
ent constituted  does  not  produce  men  and  women  capable  of 
really  fighting  the  battles  of  life  seriously  and  to  a  successful 
issue.  The  modern  city  cannot  exist  but  for  the  blood  that  pours 
into  it  from  our  rural  districts,  and  this  blood  is  consumed  from 
day  to  day  in  this  fiery  furnace  of  a  corrupt  and  corrupting  life. 
You  cannot  point  out  to  me  to-day  in  a  single  great  city  of  Amer- 
ica a  solitary  man  bom  under  the  conditions  of  modern  city  life 
whose  influence  counts  for  much  in  this  nation's  life. 

Phillips  Brooks  was  born  in  Boston,  but  he  was  born  in  Boston 
fifty  years  ago,  and  Boston  was  a  straggling  country  village  at 
that  time  as  compared  with  the  Boston  of  to-day.  The  modern 
city,  as  at  present  constituted,  does  not  produce  men.  It  cannot 
produce  men.  If  they  are  born  within  it,  they  cannot  be  reared 
to  vigorous  manhood.  The  forces  that  destroy  character  are 
overwhelming  as  compared  with  the  forces  that  build  character. 
The  doors  that  open  to  destruction  are  a  hundred  to  one  that 
open  for  life.  I  do  not  believe  that  there  has  been  enough  man- 
hood born  and  reared  in  our  modern  cities  within  the  past  gene- 
ration to  save  a  single  one  of  them  from  hell  for  twenty-four 
hours,  if  that  salvation  depended  upon  the  capacity  of  that  man- 
hood for  organization,  for  direction,  for  production. 

DANGEES   OF   THE   MODEKN   CITT. 

ft 

I  am  not  a  pessimist,  but  facts  are  facts.  I  believe  in  the  race, 
I  believe  in  its  future — but  what  race?  The  modern  city  threat- 
ens the  future  of  our  nation's  life.  The  smoke  and  fumes,  full 
of  disease  and  of  sin  and  death,  that  rise  to-day  from  these  great 
centres  of  our  life,  form  a  cloud  whose  threatening  storm  must 
burst  upon  the  nation  in  the  future.  That  which  is  worthy  to 
live  will  live.  Truth  will  triumph.  God  will  reign  supreme.  The 
question  is,  Will  you  be  in  that  triumph? 

I  believe  that  the  hour  is  come  in  which  Christian  manhood  in 


GOODY-GOODISM  AND  THE  SCOURGE  OF  CHRIS2.    115 

these  rapidly  developing  centres  must  take  a  jQrm  stand  and 
draw  the  sword  of  the  righteousness  of  Christ  and  defend  its 
strongholds  if  we  are  to  save  the  people.  Mothers  write  me  from 
country  towns  to  look  after  their  boys  and  save  them.  I  tell  you 
it  is  next  to  impossible.  The  forces  thaft  tend  to  destroy  character 
in  New  York  City  are  100  to  1.  We  fight  against  an  army  that 
is  overwhelming,  and  we  fight  with  children's  toys.  We  are 
playing  with  issues,  and  our  enemies  laugh  at  us  in  our  helpless- 
ness. With  our  delicate  white  ties  and  our  clerical-cut  clothes 
we  are  trifling  with  the  great  question  of  the  salvation  of  the 
people,  of  a.  generation,  of  a  race.  There  are  times  when  Chris- 
tian manhood  should  take  a  firm  stand.  Only  in  such  a  stand 
can  the  people  be  saved.  Our  enemies  are  incapable  of  persua- 
sion.   The  devil  in  the  modern  city  is  a  Turk  in  spirit. 

Sir  Charles  Euan-Smith,  the  recent  British  envoy  to  Fez,  in 
the  Empire  of  Morocco,  had  a  perilous  experience  in  the  Anti- 
Christian  riot.  The  mission  house  had  been  attacked.  The  win- 
dows were  smashed  v/ith  stones.  It  became  unsafe  to  venture 
in  the  gardens.  As  Sir  Charles  was  giving  the  necessary  orders 
for  the  defense  of  the  mission  an  embassy  from  the  Sultan  ap- 
peared and  implored  him  to  go  at  once  to  the  palace.  Courier 
acfter  courier,  mounted  on  magnificent  Barbary  horses,  dashed 
up,  repeating  the  summons.  Bending  at  his  feet,  they  declared, 
"My  lord,  we  pray  thee  to  listen.  Our  lord  beseeches  that  you 
come  to  him.  He  will  neither  eat  nor  drink  nor  sleep  nor  have 
any  peace  until  you  come  to  him.  Our  lord  languisheth  for  the 
light  of  your  countenance."  No  less  than  twenty  of  these  mes- 
sengers delivered  their  dramatic  summons  on  the  way. 

The  Sultan  met  Sir  Charles  in  great  agitation.  "Your  life  is 
in  danger,"  he  said.  "Your  wife  and  your  people  must  come  im- 
mediately to  the  palace.  The  populace  is  greatly  excited  against 
you.  I  can  no  longer  protect  you.  Come  to-night  and  sleep  here. 
In  the  morning  I  will  send  a  thousand  soldiers  to  escort  you  to 
the  coast."  "Your  majesty  is  mistaken,"  replied  Sir  Charles 
coolly.    "My  life  is  not  in  danger.    I  am  in  your  majesty's  safe 


116    GOODT-GOODISM  AND  THE  SCOURGE  OF  CHRIST. 

keeping."  "I  am  powerless  to  protect  you,"  cried  the  Sultan. 
"If  you  return  to  the  mission  you  will  be  killed."  "Perhaps  I 
am  to  be  killed,"  replied  Sir  Charles.  "The  mission  may  be  mas- 
sacred, but  there  will  be  another  British  minister  in  Fez  within 
a  month,  who  will  be  accompanied  by  a  staff  as  well  equipped 
as  mine  and  better,  for,"  added  the  minister  in  deliberate  tones, 
"then  there  will  not  be  a  Sultan  at  Fez." 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  Sir  Charles  and  the  mission  were 
protected.  The  men  who  were  responsible  for  the  riots  were 
beaten  and  imprisoned.  The  Pasha  who  urged  the  mob  to  stone 
the  British  vice-consul  was  fined  "$10,000.  He  crawled  on  foot 
and  placed  the  money  at  Minister  Smith's  feet.  He  swore  on  the 
Koran  he  had  not  incited  the  riot.  His  guards  were  flogged  be- 
fore the  palace,  and  Minister  Smifh  gave  the  money  to  the  poor 
of  Fez  and  rewarded  his  faithful  servants  and  soldiers. 

FACE   SATAN   IN   HIS   STEONGHOL.D. 

So  the  soldier  of  to-day  has  but  to  face  the  devil  in  his  strong- 
hold and  the  victory  will  be  his.  The  hour  has  come,  if  the  fu- 
ture of  the  city  is  to  be  Christian,  when  we  must  overturn  and 
overturn,  and  with  scourge  and  sword  drive  out  the  forces  that 
now  make  life  impossible.  The  prophecy  which  Dr.  Strong 
uttered  in  1885  to-day  rings  in  our  ears  with  more  startling  em- 
phasis than  when  he  first  gave  it  utterance.  It  is  well  to  read  it 
again.  Referring  to  the  inevitable  crisis  which  the  forces  of  evil 
are  bringing  to  pass  in  our  modern  cities,  he  says: 

"When  such  a  commercial  crisis  has  closed  factories  by  the 
ten  thousand  and  wage  earners  have  been  thrown  out  of  em- 
ployment by  the  million;  when  the  public  lands,  which  hitherto 
at  such  times  have  afforded  relief,  >are  all  exhausted;  when  our 
urban  population  has  been  multiplied  several  fold,  and  our  Cin- 
cinnatis  have  become  Chicagos,  our  Chicagos  New  Yorks,  and 
our  New  Yorks  Londons;  when  class  antipathies  are  deepened; 
when  socialistic  organizations,  armed  and  drilled,  are  in  every 
city,  and  the  ignorant  and  vicious  power  of  crowded  populations 


GOODY-GOODISM  AND  THE  HCOUROE  OF  CHRIST.    117 

has  fully  found  itself;  when  the  corruption  of  city  government 
is  grown  apace;  when  crops  faiI,or  some  gigantic  'corner'  doubles 
the  price  of  bread;  with  starvation  in  the  home;  with  idle  work- 
men gathered,  sullen  and  desperate,  in  the  saloons;  with  unpro- 
tected wealth  at  hand ;  with  the  tremendous  forces  of  chemistry 
within  easy  reach,  then,  with  the  opportunity,  the  means,  the 
fit  agents,  the  motive,  the  temptation  to  destroy,  all  brought  into 
evil  conjunction,  then  will  come  the  real  test  of  our  institutions; 
then  will  appear  whether  we  are  capable  of  government. 


CHAPTER    XII. 
The  Religion  of  the  Future. 

Does  the  decay  of  Protestantism  in  New  York  indicate  the 
fact  that  religion  in  general  is  on  the  decline?  I  do  not  believe 
it.  There  are  those  who  assert  it.  There  are  those  who  assert 
that  religion  belongs  to  the  childhood  of  the  race.  That  as  man 
grows  to  the  stature  of  intellectual  maturity,  religion  ceases  to 
be  a  necessity.  He  consequently  abandons  the  temples  of  the 
fathers.  That  this  development  is  inevitable,  resistless,  means 
the  abolition  at  last  of  all  forms  of  worship.  I  do  not  believe  that 
this  is  true.  It  is  simply  an  assumption  that  is  not  borne  out  by 
the  facts.  I  believe,  besides,  it  is  an  assumption  born  in  the  pecu- 
liarly personal  equation  of  the  man  who  asserts  it. 

Religion  is  fundamental  to  man's  nature.  He  can  no  more 
escape  its  necessity  than  he  can  jump  out  of  his  own  skin.  Reli- 
gion is  the  effort  in  man  to  rise  to  that  which  is  higher,  upon  the 
sacrihce  of  self.  It  is  in  the  very  nature  of  man  thus  to  strive. 
If  a  man  call  himself  an  infidel,  his  religion  is  his  infidelity.  It 
becomes  to  him  his  cause,  his  purpose,  his  aim  in  life,  the  means 
by  which  he  seeks  to  rise  to  the  divine  above  himself.  The  most 
enthusiastic  dogmatists  in  the  world  are  so-called  free-thinkers. 
Mrs.  Besant  stumped  England  as  an  infidel.  She  has  now  be- 
come a  Hindoo;  boasts  she  has  a  white  body,  but  a  black  soul. 
It  simply  means  that  religion  is  fundamental  to  our  very 
natures. 

PKOGEESSION. 

Therefore,  the  religion  of  the  future  will  be  progressive.  It 
will  be  progressive  because  it  will  be  vital.  Progress  is  the  law 
of  life.    An  attempt  to  embalm  religion  means  its  death.    The 


TKEIEELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE.  119 

religion  of  the  future  will  welcome  progress.  The  reason  why- 
there  are  so  few  men  in  the  churches  of  New  York  to-day,  is 
that  the  church  has  ceased  to  be  progressive.  Women  outnum- 
ber men,  four  to  one,  in  our  decaying  church-life — why?  Be- 
cause the  feminine  temperament  is  essentially  conservative. 
Woman  is  the  conservator  of  the  race.  All  radicalism  is  essen- 
tially masculine,  all  conservatism  essentially  feminine.  Woman, 
therefore,  does  not  rebel  as  does  man,  at  the  failure  to  go  for- 
ward, to  create  new  forms,  new  thoughts,  new  methods.  Christ 
Himself  declared  that  He  had  many  things  to  say  unto  His  disci- 
ples, but  that  the  time  was  not  ripe;  they  could  not  bear  them. 
"Howbeit,"  said  He,  "when  the  Spirit  of  truth  is  come  he  will 
lead  you  into  the  whole  truth."  In  one  sense,  therefore,  the 
Catholic  Church  is  more  in  line  with  the  church  of  the  future 
than  Protestantism.  The  Catholic  Church  believes  in  a  progres- 
sive revelation,  in  the  ever-living  Spirit  within  the  church.  Here- 
in Roman  Catholicism  is  right  and  Protestantism  wrong,  for 
this  is  the  re-echo  of  the  promise  of  Jesus  Christ. 
Number  Eighteen 

SIMPLICITY. 

The  religion  of  the  future  must  be  a  simple,  as  contrasted  with 
a  formal,  religion.  Jesus  was  a  form-breaker.  He  broke  the 
Sabbath  day.  He  ate  with  publicans  and  sinners.  He  ate  with 
unwashed  hands.  This  was  a  violation  of  the  fundamentals  of 
the  ritual  of  the  church  of  His  fathers.  The  growth  of  the  intel- 
lect of  man  is  coincident  with  the  decay  of  forms.  Forms  are 
for  those  who  feel  the  need  of  them.  The  younger  the  intellec- 
tual development,  the  stronger  is  this  feeling  of  need.  The  reli- 
gion that  holds  the  thinkers  of  the  next  century  will  not  be  for- 
mal, but  simple.  Out  of  forty-three  governors  of  the  States  of 
this  Union,  only  seventeen  of  them  are  members  of  the  church; 
yet  every  one  of  them  profess  heart  allegiance  to  the  religion  of 
Jesus.  This  means  that  the  men  of  force  and  of  character  and 
of  individuality,  more  and  more  will  be  disassociated  from  the 


120  TEE  RELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

mere  formalities  of  church-life,  unless  the  requirements  of  those 
forms  are  made  less  stringent  and  less  essential. 

IN   HABMONY  WITH    SEASON. 

The  religion  of  the  future  will  be  in  harmony  with  reason, with 
history,  with  intelligence.  Therefore,  the  clergyman  of  the  fu- 
ture will  own  a  study,  a  library,  not  a  shop  in  which  he  manu- 
factures sermons.  He  may  be  charged  with  tendencies  that  are 
heretical.  Any  man  that  studies  must  doubt.  Doubt  is  the  be- 
ginning of  knowledge.  No  man  ever  learned  anything  except 
through  the  vestibule  of  a  doubt.  The  man  who  is  afraid  of  a 
doubt  is  dead  intellectually.  Religion  must  be  in  harmony  with 
the  divine  light  of  Reason.  I  mean  by  Reason  the  sum  total  of 
man's  spiritual  faculties,  including  conscience.  God  has  given 
man  Reason  as  the  primal  light  which  lights  every  man  coming 
into  the  world.  Reason  does  not  clash  with  faith;  rather  it  is  the 
complement  of  faith.  When  Reason  has  gone  to  its  farthest 
limit,  faith  reaches  forward  into  the  darkness  and  cries,  "I  be- 
lieve!" Any  religion  that  clashes  with  the  light  of  Reason  is  a 
superstition,  not  religion.  We  cannot,  in  other  words,  believe 
what  we  know  to  be  a  lie  to  be  the  truth.  Any  man  who  saya 
that  he  can  believe  a  lie  to  be  true  is  simply  declaring  himself  to 
be  a  liar.  There  can  be  no  clash  between  Reason  and  religion. 
Whenever  there  is  a  clash  it  simply  means  that  what  we  call  re- 
ligion is  the  sheerest  superstition.  A  British  critic,  in  reviewing 
the  work  of  a  professor  of  theology  in  America,  entitled  "Ortho- 
doxy and  Heterodoxy,"  says,  concerning  his  attitude  to  the  criti- 
cism of  Scripture:  "It  is  devoid  of  intelligence  to  the  extent  of 
being  immoral  to  a  man  occupying  his  position."  We  cannot 
longer  teach  traditions  as  the  essence  of  faith.  If  we  teach  the 
doctrine  of  the  Trinity  it  must  be  a  rational  doctrine,  or  it  will 
not  be  held  by  the  dawning  century.  The  Trinity  taught  in  the 
past  has  been  a  bald  tri-theism  instead  of  a  Trinity,  and  the 
error  came  simply  from  the  Latin  translation  of  the  Bible.  The 
word  persona  meant,  in  the  Latin,  the  mask  through  which  the 


TEE  RELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE.  121 

ftctor  speaks.  God  in  three  persons,  in  the  Latin,  meant  God 
speaking  through  three  characters  on  the  stage — one  God,  there- 
fore, speaking  through  the  mask  of  Father,  Son,  Spirit.  We 
have  lost  the  meaning  of  the  word  persona  in  our  word  person. 
Our  word  person  means  the  individual.  Persona  meant  the  mask 
through  which  the  individual  speaks.  One  person,  therefore, 
could  speak  through  many  masks — so  one  God  speaks  through 
three  characters.  This  faith  harmonizes  with  the  light  of  rea- 
son. Such  must  be  the  reconstruction  of  the  traditions  of  our 
theology. 

DEEDS   NOT   CBEEDS. 

When  we  worship  God  we  must  not  worship  the  devil.  We 
cannot  define  God  to  be  a  fiend  and  call  Him  good.  Upon  such 
traditions  the  conscience  of  humanity  has  outgrown  orthodoxy. 
The  only  worship  of  the  religion  of  the  Father  must  be  the  wor- 
ship which  Christ  demanded  of  His  Disciples,  namely,  the  ser- 
vice of  man.  "The  Son  of  man  came  not  to  be  ministered  unto, 
but  to  minister."  "As  the  Father  hath  sent  me,  even  so  I  send 
you."  And  I  believe  that  the  Church  will  triucnph  in  the  cen- 
turies— but  what  Church?  I  do  not  mean  by  this  any  ecclesias- 
tical establishment  that  claims  the  glories  of  historic  record.  I 
mean  the  Church  of  Jesus  Christ — the  Christianity  of  Christ  as 
distinguished  from  the  Christiamity  of  ecclesisstical  history. 
The  characteristic  of  that  triumphant  Church  will  certainly  be 
that  its  standard  will  be  ethical,  not  theoretical.  The  Christian 
world  is  already  a  unit  on  ethics,  Christianity  is  divided  on  the 
subject  of  government  and  a  few  abstract  doctrines.  There  is 
no  division  as  to  the  essential  ethical  code.  As  to  deeds  we  are 
alreidy  one.  Our  code,  the  world  over,  is  the  Ten  Command- 
ments— love  to  God  and  love  to  man.  The  Greek  Church  de- 
clares that  only  this  man  truly  has  religion.  The  Latin  Church 
declares  that  only  this  man  is  a  true  worshipper.  The  Protes- 
tant Church  declares  that  only  the  man  who  complies  with  the 
requirements  of  this  code  is  a  true  disciple  of  Christ.    Whatever 


122  THE  RELiaiON  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

men  may  profess,  to  whatever  creed  or  church  they  may  belong,^ 
there  is  but  one  standard  of  ethics,  to-day  for  the  Christian 
world,  and  it  is  the  same  standard  for  every  division  of  Christen- 
dom. This  will  undoubtedly  be  the  first  corner-stone  of  the  great 
Church  that  will  triumph  in  the  future — the  essentiality  of  deeds 
rather  than  creeds. 

SAM  JONES   AND   EMEKSON. 

The  men  who  succeed,  to-day,  in  winning  the  world  to  their 
religion  are  precisely  the  men  whatever  be  their  forms  of  ex- 
pression, who  preach,  distinctly  and  forcefully,  an  ethical  gospel. 
I  have  heard  men  of  the  world  say  that  they  were  disgusted  with 
the  vulgarity  of  Sam  Jones  and  wonder  w'hy  he  can  succeed  in 
reaching  and  holding  and  converting  to  righteousess  thousands 
of  his  fellow  men.  I  have  heard  ministers  who  prided  themselves 
upon  their  orthodoxy  wonder  at  Sam  Jones's  success  for  another 
reason.  They  said,  "He  does  not  preach  Christ,"  does  not  preach 
the  Atonement,  the  blood;  and  they  marvel  at  his  success.  There 
is  but  one  reason  for  this  wonderful  man's  success,  and  that  is, 
with  all  the  peculiarities  of  his  methods,  he  preaches  with  tre- 
mendous earnestness  the  fundamentals  of  an  ethical  religion, 
whose  unceasing  refrain  is,  "Quit  your  meanness."  This  is  sim- 
ply the  vernacular  translation  of  tlie  message  of  Christ:  "Not 
every  one  that  sayeth  unto  me  'Ijord,  Lord,'  s'hall  enter  in;  but 
he  that  doeth  the  will  of  my  Father."  B.  Fay  Mills  is  another 
of  our  successful  evangelists.  I  have  known  him  to  hold  meet- 
ings in  large  cities  in  which  the  entire  business  of  the  communi- 
ty was  suspended  at  noo'n-day  to  attend  the  services.  This  thing 
occurs  not  once  or  twice;  but  it  has  occurred  hundreds  of  times, 
aind  it  has  occurred  in  almost  every  State  of  the  Union,  What 
is  the  secret  of  Mr.  Mills's  power?  I  believe  it  is  simply  this — 
he  preaches,  with  tremendous  earnestness,  a  profoundly  ethical 
gospel.  Why  is  it  that  RaljVh  Waldo  Emersion,  though  disasso- 
ciated from  any  church,  possesses  a  peculiar  power  over  the 
minds  of  this  generation  ?    He  is  a  teacher  of  tremendous  power. 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE.  123 

There  is  scarcely  a  young  man  or  woman  of  culture  in  any  Prot- 
esitant  denomination  in  New  England  and  the  Middle  States 
w'ho  is  not  influenced  more  or  less  by  this  great  teacher's  words. 
Why  has  he  this  power?  He  teaches  the  fundamentals  of  an 
ethical  faith. 

That  is  to  say,  if  you  take  away  from  the  Christianity  of 
Christendom  all  that  reason  and  consciemce  condemns  or  ques- 
tions, you  will  have  remaining  the  simple  Christianity  of  Christ. 
His  religion  was  a  religion  of  coinduct.  He  never  uttered  a  faith 
He  di  d  not  rest  on  it  Himself.  He  breathed  no  hope  that  was 
not  His  own.  And  when  He  spoke  of  faith  He  did  not  mean 
assent  to  a  dogma;  He  meant  personal  devotion  to  Himself.  No 
teacher  in  the  world  ever  said  less  about  creeds  than  Jesus 
Christ.  His  burden  was  human  life.  He  laid  down  no  dogmas, 
invented  no  formularies,  made  no  fine  definitions. 

Upon  the  other  hand,  the  Church,  in  its  ecclesiastical  develop- 
ment, has  been  busy  discussing  abstract  and  ditficult  problems 
that  >are  of  no  importance  on  this  earth,  beneath  it  or  above  it. 
For  hundreds  of  years  the  ecclesiastics  fought  like  tigers  over 
the  letter  "I"  in  a  Greek  word,  and  knew  no  more  when  they  got 
through  with  the  discussion  than  they  did  when  they  began. 
The  Christian  Church  was  divided  into  the  Greek  and  Latin  di- 
visions by  what  is  called  the  filioque  clause  of  the  Nicene  Creed; 
that  is,  whether  the  Holy  Ghost  proceeds  from  the  Father  and 
the  Son,  or  from  the  Father  alone — and  what  this  means  God  in 
heaven  only  knows.  Christ  certainly  made  no  reference  to  any 
such  nonsensical  discussions.  His  commands  were  simple,  per- 
sonal, vital.  "Love  one  another."  "My  commandment  is  that 
ye  love  one  another."  "Inasmuch  as  ye  did  it;  enter.  Inasmuch 
as  ye  did  it  not,  depart."  The  salvation  of  conduct  and  of  char- 
acter Is  the  only  salvation  about  which  Jesus  Christ  ever  spoke. 

HUMANITAEIAN. 

The  religion  of  the  future  in  the  Church  triumphant  will  be 
humanitarian  and  it  will  be  humane.    It  will  not,  because  it  can- 


124  THE  RELIGION  OF  TEE  FUTURE. 

not,  damn  a  world  to  save  a  syllogism.  The  enlightened  con- 
science of  humanity  will  not  tolerate  it.  It  can  only  take  Oalvin 
and  Tertuilian  in  broken  doses.  It  will  take  so  much  of  the  or- 
thodoxy of  the  past  as  can  be  reconciled  with  the  enlightened 
Christian  conscience  of  humanity.  It  will  modify,  therefore, 
those  exaggerations  of  truth  that  violate  conscience.  "I  have 
sinned,"  said  Martin  Luther,  "but  Christ  has  not  sinned;  sin, 
siin  mightily,  but  have  all  the  more  confidence  in  Christ.  We  are 
justified  by  God,  gratis.  He  imputes  righteousness  to  us,  which 
makes  us  directly  holy  as  though  we  were  altogether  without 
sin."  In  (the  exaggeration  of  this  doctrine  the  Reformation  will 
have  to  be  reformed.  John  Calvin  speaks  of  the  delightful  bene- 
fits of  the  predestination  of  the  damned.  Tertuilian,  one  of  the 
fatjhers,  siaid:  "The  sweetest  music  of  heaven  will  be  the  wail- 
ings  of  the  lost."  A  Christian  minister  is  reported  to  have  said 
in  his  pulpit,  a  few  years  ago:  "My  hearers,  you  may  imagine 
that  when  you  are  in  heaven  and  lo-ok  down  upon  your  friends  in 
hell,  your  happiness  will  be  somewhat  marred.  Not  a  bit  of  it. 
By  that  time  you  will  be  so  purified  and  perfected,  that  as  you 
gaze  upon  thart;  sea  of  suffering  it  will  only  increase  your  joy." 
Such  stuff  as  this  is  the  vapid  raving  of  insanity,  and  the  en- 
ligthtened  conscience  of  the  human  race  has  long  ago  utterly  re- 
pudiated it.  If  this  be  orthodoxy,  the  religion  of  the  future  is 
certain  to  be  heterodox. 

SAVING   POWEE. 

This  Church  triumphant  will  have  only  one  mark  of  its  author- 
ity, and  that  will  be  its  power  to  save  men.  That  is  the  only 
authority  which  Christ  promised.  "Ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth. 
If  the  salt  have  lost  its  savor  it  will  be  cast  out  and  trodden 
under  foot  of  men."  If  it  saves,  then  it  is  a  salt.  The  church 
that  saves  is  the  Church  of  Christ.  The  church  that  gets  fright- 
ened by  a  mob  of  unwashed,  abandoned  people,  folds  up  its  tent 
and  sneaks  off  uptown  to  find  a  soft  place  to  live,  has  already 
lost  its  savor  and  is  fit  only  to  be  trampled  under  the  foot  of  men. 
It  is  useless  for  such  an  organiaztion  to  prate  about  historic  au- 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE.  125 

thority  or  historic  continuity.  The  supreme  test  is  the  power  to 
lift  up  man  and  save  him — save  him,  soul  and  body,  for  the  min- 
istry of  Jesus  was  both  to  the  body  and  the  soul.  His  ministry 
of  healing  forms  a  large  part  of  the  record  of  H's  life. 

A   SOCIAi   POWEE. 

This  triumphant  Ohurch  must  be  a  social  power.  It  must 
preach  a  sociological  as  contradis/tinguished  from  a  merely  indi- 
vidual gospel.  Man,  to-day,  is  more  than  an  individuail.  The  in- 
dividual has  played  his  part  in  the  development  of  the  centuries. 
This  age  is  a  social  age,  the  age  of  federation,  the  age  of  organ- 
ization, of  solidarity,  of  humanity.  "No  man  livet'h  to  himself." 
A  gospel  that  is  a  vital  one,  to-day,  must  touch  business,  it  must 
touch  labor,  it  must  touch  capital.  It  must  lay  its  hand  upon 
polities,  which  is  but  religion  in  action.  It  must  know  that  the 
state  is  merely  the  organ  of  the  whole  people  which  they  use  in 
their  pursuit  of  righteousness.  That  the  state  is  a  function, 
therefore,  of  the  Christian  Church  that  is  to  conquer  the  world. 
That  ecclesiastical  power  can  never  supplant  this  power,  because 
it  is  in  itself  more  sacred  than  the  ecclesiastic. 

COMMON   SENSE. 

Its  methods  must  be  the  methods  of  common  sense;  therefore, 
they  will  be  simple.  When  Paul  went  to  Athens  as  a  preacher, 
he  did  not  go  to  the  little  Jewish  synagogue,  the  church  of  his 
fathers, and  simply  say:  "I  am  here  to  preach  the  Gospel  of  Jesus 
Christ.  I  preach  it  to  you,  and  if  you  don't  believe  it  you  can  go 
hell.  My  duty  is  done."  He  went  down  into  the  market-place, 
he  went  to  the  acropolis  where  the  Athenians  went  to  congre- 
gate, to  discuss  the  news.  He  rose  before  them,  discoursed  to 
them  about  their  art,  about  their  literature,  their  poets  and 
sculptors,  and,  skilfully  gaining  their  attention  and  interest, 
told  them  about  the  monument  he  had  observed  to  an  unknown 
God.  This  was  the  entering  wedge  through  which  he  poured  his 
message  of  love  from  Christ.    In  Athens,  he  was  an  Athenian. 


126  TEE  RELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

Among  every  people  he  was  all  things  to  all  men,  if  by  all  means 
he  might  save  some.  The  church  of  the  future,  therefore,  will 
not  be  afraid  of  sensationalism. 

This  church  must  be  honest  with  men.  If  there  are  clerical 
errors  in  the  Bible  it  cannot  contradict  the  results  of  the  scholar- 
ship of  the  centuries  and  expect  to  live.  It  must  accept  these 
results.  As  a  great  scholar  has  so  truthfully  said:  "The  whole 
system  of  traditional  orthodoxy,  Greek,  Latin  and  Protestant, 
must  progress  or  it  will  be  left  behind  the  age  and  lose  its  hold 
on  thinking  men.  The  church  must  keep  pace  with  civilization, 
adjust  herself  to  the  modern  conditions  of  religious  and  political 
freedom,  and  accept  the  established  results  of  Biblical  and  his- 
torical criticism  and  natural  science.  God  speaks  in  history  and 
science  as  well  as  in  the  Bible  and  the  church,  amd  He  cannot 
contradict  Himself.  Truth  is  sovereign,  and  must  and  will  pre- 
vail over  all  ignorance,  error  and  prejudice."  And,  therefore, 
the  present  church  will  be  adapted  to  the  environment  of  its  new 
life.  Want  of  adaptation  means  death.  As  a  gresut  preacher  in 
England  has  recently  said:  "Institutions  can  only  continue  to 
exist  by  adapting  themselves  to  their  surroundings.  Now  the 
church,  as  we  have  seen,  is  quite  out  of  harmony  with  modern 
civilization.  Both  morally  and  intellectually  it  is  centuries  be- 
hind the  age.  The  most  highly  educated  people  have  discarded 
the  fundamental  doctrines  of  orthodoxy.  Even  the  average  man 
is  beginning  to  look  upon  those  doctrines  with  suspicion  and  con- 
tempt. They  are  opposed  to  the  best  instincts  of  the  race,  in- 
stincts which  are  becoming  every  day  more  authoritative.  The 
church  is  bound,  therefore,  to  be  either  reformed  or  destroyed. 
If  it  is  not  reformed  from  within  it  will  be  destroyed  from  with- 
out. And  by  reform  I  do  not  mean  any  patching  up  of  the  Arti- 
cles, any  tinkering  of  the  Creeds.  It  must  be  a  thorough,  radi- 
eail,  absolute  reform.  It  must  begin  again  from  the  beginning. 
It  must  take  a  fresh  start  from  Christ.  The  last  two  thousand 
years  of  ecclesiastical  nightmare  must  be  as  though  they  had 
never  been.    The  church  must  be  born  again." 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE.  127 

This  church  must,  therefore,  have  a  ministry  of  power.  The 
men  who  shall  belong  to  this  ministry  must  be  ordained  of  God, 
not  of  man.  They  must  have  the  primal  endowments  of  a  re- 
sistless personality.  The  standard  of  the  man  now  applying  to 
enter  the  ministry  is  below  the  average  af  the  intellectual  attain- 
ments of  this  generation.  There  are  a  thousand  preachers  around 
this  city  to-day,  therefore,  out  of  a  job.  They  have  missed  their 
calling.  Their  reail  function  should  have  been  the  development 
of  agriculture.  When  a  church  vacancy  occurs  these  men  liter- 
ally fall  over  one  an'other  in  the  scramble  to  get  the  place.  The 
day  for  this  sort  of  minister  is  gone.  Men  only  of  personal,  in- 
telleotual  power  can  expect  to  live  in  the  church  of  the  future. 

TEUTH  IN   ALL. 

This  glorious  church  of  the  future  must  be  honest  with  church 
history,  and,  therefore,  it  must  be  liberal  in  spirit.  It  must  re- 
cognize the  truth  wherever  it  is  found,  and  return  thanks  to  God 
for  every  aspect  of  truth  presented  by  the  different  developments 
of  historic  Christianity.  It  must  accept  with  joy  the  magmfi- 
cent  summary  of  church  history  made  by  that  matchless  histo- 
rian, Dr.  Schaff,  just  before  his  death.    Hear  him: 

"The  Greek  Church  is  a  glorious  church:  for  in  her  language 
have  come  down  to  us  the  oracles  of  God,  the  Septuagint,  the 
Gospels,  and  Epistles;  hers  are  the  early  confessors  and  mar- 
tyrs, the  Christian  fathers,  bishops,  patriarchs  and  emperors; 
here  the  immortal  writings  of  Origen,  Eusebius,  Athanasius  and 
Ohrysostom;  here  the  Oecumenical  Councils  and  the  Nicene 
Creed,  which  can  never  die. 

"The  Latin  Church  is  a  glorious  church;  for  she  carried  the 
treasures  of  Christian  and  classical  literature  over  the  gulf  of 
the  migration  of  nations  and  preserved  order  in  the  chaos  of  civil 
wars;  she  was  the  Alma  Mater  of  the  barbarians  of  Europe;  she 
turned  painted  savages  into  civilized  beings  and  worshippers  of 
idols  into  worshippers  of  Christ;  she  built  up  the  colossal  struc- 
tures of  the  papal  theocracy,  the  canotn  law,  the  monastic  orders, 


128  TEE  RELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

the  cathedrals  and  the  universities;  she  produced  the  profound 
systems  of  scholastic  and  mystic  theology;  she  stimulated  and 
patronized  the  Renaissance,  the  printing  press  and  the  discovery 
of  a  new  "world;  she  still  stands,  like  an  immovable  rock,  bearing 
wdtness  to  the  fundamental  truths  and  facts  of  our  holy  religion, 
aaid  to  the  Catholicity,  unity,  unbroken  continuity  and  independ- 
ence of  the  church;  and  she  is  as  zealous  as  ever  in  missionary 
enterprise  and  self-denying  works  of  Christian  charity. 

"We  hail  the  Reformation,  which  redeemed  us  from  the  yoke 
of  spiritual  despotism  and  secured  us  religious  liberty — the  most 
precious  of  all  liberties — and  made  the  Bible,  in  every  language, 
a  book  for  all  classes  and  conditions  of  men. 

"The  Evangelical  Lutheran  Church,  the  firsit-born  daughter 
of  the  Reformation,  is  a  glorious  Church:  for  she  set  the  Word 
of  God  above  the  traditions  of  men,  and  bore  witness  to  the  com- 
forting truth  of  justification  by  faith;  she  struck  the  keynote  to 
thousands  of  sweet  hymns  in  praise  of  the  Redeemer;  she  is 
boldly  and  reverently  investigating  the  problems  of  faith  and 
philosophy  and  is  con-stantly  making  valuable  additions  to  theo- 
logical lore. 

"The  Evangelical  Reformed  Church  is  a  glorious  Church:  for 
she  carried  the  Reformation  from  the  Alps  and  lakes  of  Switz- 
erland *to  the  end  of  the  West'  (to  use  the  words  of  the  Roman 
Clement  about  St.  Paul);  she  furnished  more  martyrs  of  con- 
science in  France  atnd  the  Netherlands  alone  than  any  other 
Church,  even  during  the  first  three  centuries;  she  educated  heroic 
races,  like  the  Huguenots,  the  Dutch,the  Puritans,the  Covenant- 
ers, the  Pilgrim  Fathers,  who,  by  the  fear  of  God,  were  raised 
above  the  fear  of  tyrants,  and  lived  and  died  for  the  advance- 
ment of  civil  and  religious  liberty;  sihe  is  rich  in  learning  and 
good  works  of  faith:  she  keeps  pace  with  all  true  progress;  she 
grapples  with  the  problems  and  evils  of  modern  society;  and  she 
sends  the  Gospel  to  the  ends  of  the  earth. 

"The  Episcopal  Church  of  England,  the  most  churchly  of  the 
reformed  family,  is  a  glorious  Church:  for  she  gave  to  the  En- 


TEE  RELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE.  129 

gilish-speaking  world  the  best  version  of  the  Holy  Scriptures  and 
tihe  best  prayer-book;  she  preserved  the  order  and  dignity  of  the 
ministry  and  public  worship;  she  nursed  the  knowledge  and  love 
of  antiquity  and  enriched  the  treasury  of  Christian  literature; 
and,  by  the  Anglo-Oatholic  revival,  under  the  moral,  intellectual 
and  poetic  leadership  of  three  shining  lights  of  Oxford — Pusey, 
Newman  and  Keble — she  infused  new  life  into  her  institutions 
and  customs,  and  prepared  the  way  for  a  better  understanding 
between  Anglicanism  and  Romanism. 

"The  Presbyterian  Church  of  Scotland,  the  most  flourishing 
daughter  of  Greneva — as  John  Knox,  'who  never  feared  the  face 
of  man,'  was  the  most  faithful  disciple  of  Calvin — is  a  glorious 
Churdh:  for  she  turned  a  barren  country  into  a  garden,  and 
raised  a  poor  and  semi-barbarous  people  to  a  level  with  the  rich- 
est and  most  intelligent  nations;  she  diffused  the  knowledge  of 
the  Bible  and  a  love  of  the  kirk  in  the  huts  of  the  peasant  as  well 
as  the  places  of  the  nobleman  ;she  has  always  stood  up  for  church 
order  and  discipline,  for  the  rig*hts  of  the  laity,  and, first  and  last, 
for  the  crown-rights  of  King  Jesus,  which  are  above  all  earthly 
crowns,  even  that  of  the  proudest  monarch  on  whose  dominion 
the  sun  never  sets. 

"The  Congregational  Church  is  a  glorious  Church:  for  she  has 
taught  the  principle  and  proved  the  capacity,  of  congregational 
independence  and  self-government,  based  upon  a  living  faith  in 
Christ,  without  diminishing  the  effect  of  voluntary  co-operation 
in  the  Master's  service;  and  has  laid  the  foundation  of  New  Eng- 
land with  its  literary  and  theological  institations  and  high  social 
culture. 

"The  Baptist  Church  is  a  glorious  Church:  for  she  bore,  and 
still  bears,  testimony  to  the  primitive  mode  of  baptism,  to  the 
purity  of  the  congregation,  to  the  separation  of  church  and  state 
and  the  liberty  of  conscience;  and  has  given  to  the  world  the 
"Pilgrim's  Progress"  of  Bunyan,  such  preachers  as  Robert  Hall 
and  Charles  H.  Spurgeon,  and  such  missionaries  as  Carey  and 
Judson. 


130  TEE  RELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE. 

"The  Methodist  Church,  the  ChurCh  of  John  Wesley,  Charles 
Wesley  and  George  Whitefield — three  of  the  best  and  most  apos- 
tolic BngrMshmen,  abounding  in  useful  labors,  the  first  as  a  ruler 
and  organizer,  the  second  as  a  hymnist,  the  third  as  an  evange- 
list— is  a  glorious  church:  for  she  produced  the  greatest  religious 
revival  since  the  day  of  Pentecost;  she  preaches  a  free  and  full 
salvation  to  all;  she  is  never  afraid  to  fight  the  devil,  and  she  is 
hopefully  and  cheerfully  inarching  on,  in  both  hemispheres,  as 
an  army  of  conquest. 

"The  Society  of  Friends,  though  one  of  the  smaMest  tribes  in 
Israel,  is  a  glorious  society:  for  it  has  born  witness  to  the  inner 
light  which  'lighteth  every  man  that  cometh  into  the  world';  it 
has  proved  the  superiority  of  the  Spirit  over  all  forms;  it  has 
done  noble  service  in  promoting  tolerance  and  liberty,  in  prison 
reform,  the  emancipation  of  slaves,  and  other  works  of  Christian 
philanthropy. 

"The  Brotherhood  of  the  Moravians,  founded  by  Count  Zin- 
zendorf — a  true  nobleman  of  nature  and  of  grace — is  a  glorious 
brotherhood:  for  it  is  the  pioneer  of  heathen  missions  and  of 
Christian  union  among  Protestant  churches;  it  was  like  an  oasis 
in  the  desert  of  German  rationalism  at  home,  while  its  mission- 
aries went  forth  to  the  lowest  savages  in  distant  lands  to  bring 
them  to  Christ.  I  beheld  with  wonder  and  admiration  a  vener- 
able Moravian  couple  devoting  their  lives  to  the  care  of  hopeless 
lepers  in  the  vicinity  of  Jerusalem. 

"Nor  should  we  forget  the  services  of  many  who  are  accounted 
heretics. 

"The  Waldeuses  were  witnesses  of  a  pure  and  sample  faith  in 
times  of  superstition,  and,  having  outlived  many  bloody  persecu- 
tions, are  now  missionaries  among  the  descendants  of  their  per- 
secutors. 

"The  Anabaptists  and  Socinians,  who  were  so  cruelly  treated 
in  the  sixteenth  century  by  Protesitants  and  Romanists  alike, 
were  the  first  to  aise  their  voice  for  religious  liberty  and  the  vo- 
luntary principle  in  religion. 

"Unitarianism  is  a  serious  departure  from  the  trinitarian  faith 


THE  RELIGION  OF  THE  FUTURE.  131 

of  orthodox  Cliristendom,  but  it  did  good  service  as  a  protest 
against  tritheism,  and  against  a  stiff,  narrow  and  uncbaritable 
orthodoxy.  It  brought  into  prominence  the  human  perfection  of 
Christ's  character,  and  illustrated  the  effect  of  His  example  in 
the  noble  lives  and  devotional  writings  of  such  men  as  Channing 
and  Martineau.  It  has  also  given  us  some  of  our  purest  and 
sweetest  poets,  as  Emerson,  Bryant,  Longfellow  and  Lowell, 
whom  all  good  men  must  honor  and  love  for  their  lofty  moral 
tone. 

"Universalism  may  be  condemned  as  a  doctriaie;  but  it  has  a 
right  to  protest  against  a  gross  materialistic  theory  of  hell  with 
all  its  Dautesque  horrors,  and  against  the  once  widely-spread 
popular  belief  that  the  overwhelming  majority  of  the  human 
race,  including  countless  millions  of  innocent  infants,  will  for- 
ever perish.  Nor  should  we  forget  that  some  of  the  greatest 
divines,  from  Origen  and  Gregory  of  Nyssa  down  to  Bengel  and 
Schleiermacher,  believed  in,  or  hoped  for,  the  ultimate  return  of 
all  rational  creatures  to  the  God  of  love,  who  created  them  in 
His  own  image  and  for  Hiis  own  glory. 

"And,  coming  down  to  the  latest  organization  of  Christian 
work,  which  does  not  claim  to  be  a  church,  but  which  is  a  help 
to  lall  churches — the  Salvation  Army:  we  hail  it,  in  spite  of  its 
strange  and  abnormal  methods,  as  the  most  effective  revival 
agency  since  the  days  of  Wesley  and  Whitefield ;  for  it  descends 
to  the  lowest  depths  of  degradation  and  misery,  and  brings  the 
light  and  cumf ort  of  the  Gospel  to  the  slums  of  our  large  cities. 
Let  us  thank  God  for  the  noble  men  and  women  who,  under  the 
inspiration  of  the  love  of  Christ,  and  unmindful  of  hardship,  ridi- 
cule and  persecution,  sacrifice  their  lives  to  the  rescue  of  the 
hopeless  outcasts  of  society.  Truly,  these  good  Samaritans  are 
an  honor  to  the  name  of  Christ  and  a  benediction  to  a  lost 
world." 

The  church  of  the  future  will  be  heir,  conscious  heir,  with 
gratitude  to  God,  to  these  priceless  achievements,  will  gather 
them  up  as  her  own  treasure,  -and  one  in  Chrisit  press  forward 
to  the  conquest  of  the  world, 


APPENDIX. 


"What  are  the  Churches  Going 
TO  Do  About  It  ?" 


I  beg  leave  to  reprint  as  an  appendix  the  foHowing  remarkable  pamphlet 
which  was  issued  by  the  eminently  conservative  gentlemen  who  sign  it  while 
I  wa3  preparing  the  manuscript  for  this  book.    T.  D.,  Jr. 


Prefatory  Note. 


We  pray  your  consideration  of  the  facts  herein  presented. 
They  have  been  gathered  by  the  committee  appointed  ait  a  meet- 
ing of  pastors  of  various  denominations,  and  were  presented  at 
a  special  meeting  of  clergj'-men  and  laymen  representing  several 
denominations. 

At  the  latter  meeting  they  were  regarded  pf  sufficient  import- 
ance to  become  the  basis  of  organization  lOf  the  Federation  of 
the  Churches  of  New  York  City. 

In  preparing  the  circular  letter  accompanying  this,  it  was 
found  that  there  was  need  of  presenting  more  fully  the  reasons 
why  the  churches  should  co-operate. 

At  the  meeting  on  the  twenty-first  of  October  this  statement 
was  ordered  to  be  printed  and  sent  to  each  pastor  in  the  city. 

We  therefore  submit  these  facts,  hoping  that  you  will  feel 
with  us  the  desirability  of  such  federation.  Any  doubt  of  the 
accuracy  of  the  statistics  herein  presented  emphasizes  the  need 
of  securing  a  careful  canvass  of  the  whole  city  by  interdenomi- 
national action. 

In  "behalf  of  the  Federation  by  the  Special  Committee, 

The  Eev.  Anson  P.  Attekbuey,  D.  D. 
E.  B.  CoE,  D.  D. 
"  C.  S.  Habeower,  D.  D. 

J.  M.  Phllputt,  D.  D. 
'•  J.  B.  Remensnydee,  D.  D. 

"  Heney  M.  Sandees,  D.  D.' 

E  '*  Heney  A.  Stimson,  D.  D. 

J,   WiNTHROP  Hegeman,  Ph.  D. 
Chairman. 


Relation  of  ttie  Churclies  to  Our  Social 

Life. 


The  churches  of  New  York  City  are  not  acoomplishing  their 
social  mission.  Any  one  may  be  convinced  that  this  is  a  fact  by 
a  study  of  the  average  church  life  as  related  to  the  physical, 
economic,  social  and  spiritual  interests  of  the  home  life  of  our 
city. 

Under  the  present  condition  of  disunion,  churchism  and  indi- 
vidualism, the  churches  never  can  accomplish  their  social  mis- 
sion. 

Yet  upon  them  rests  the  responsibility  of  securing  the  moral 
or  spiritual  foundation  of  social  well-being,  and  of  doing  the  con- 
structive work  of  city  civilization.  The  churches  can  do  this. 
Only  the  churches  can  do  it.  By  their  aim  they  are  committed 
to  it.    By  their  constitution  they  are  fitted  for  it. 

The  555  churches,  with  their  clergy  and  400,000  clientele,  form 
first  fruits  of  the  new  creation  to  be  leaders  and  helpers  of  every 
home  and  social  relations  they  come  into  touch  with  every  hu- 
man interest.  By  being  organized  into  churches  they  have  the 
capacity  of  direct  action  and  possess  various  functions  for  the 
expression  of  their  complete  life. 

Notwithstanding,  there  never  has  been  put  forth  a  serious  and 
business-like  effort  to  save  New  York  City. 

These  members  are  the  choice  spirits  of  the  city,  owning  more 
than  one-fourth  of  our  wealth,  leaders  in  reforms,  founders  of 
charitable  institutions  and  of  colleges,  and  capable  by  concen- 
trated effort,  wisely  directed,  to  effect  any  desirable  purpose  for 
social,  civic  or  ecclesiastical  well-being. 

Instead  of  these  resources  having  been  used,  it  is  the  shameful 
truth  that  not  one-hundreth  part  of  the  power  of  the  churches  is 
operative. 

The  aim  of  the  churches  is  to  bring  all  the  interests  of  this  line 


136  APPENDIX, 

into  harmony  with  the  principles  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  to 
do  the  will  of  the  Father  on  earth  as  it  is  done  in  heaven,  and  as 
first  fruits  of  the  new  creation  to  be  leaders  of  every  movement 
movement  working  for  righteousness. 

The  present  arrangements  for  influencing  society  in  accord 
with  such  a  purpose  would  show  ithat  there  'has  been  no  serious 
a*tempt  made  to  reailize  that  end.  The  average  church  life  has 
fallen  to  the  pitiable  posibion  of  loyalty  first  to  the  church.  It 
has  even  disclosed  disloyalty  to  the  Christ,  in  that  its  policies 
have  not  revealed  that  it  has  been  loyal  to  the  church  for  the 
sake  of  the  Christ. 

The  churches  know  well  tha4:  all  social  reforms  begin  among 
the  humble  citizens  and  work  upward.  Yet,  in  this  most  demo- 
cratic country,  the  churches  are  our  most  'aristocratic  institu- 
tions, more  aristocraliic  than  those  in  any  pant  of  the  world. 

Church  members  voluntarily  place  themselves  under  the  law 
of  love  to  God  and  to  neighbor  as  to  self.  This  love  works  out 
ideal  homes  and  a  desire  that  other  homes  should  be  pure  and 
clean  and  sweet.  It  is  the  source  of  public  spirit  when  enlarged 
to  the  wish  to  secure  best  social  conditions  for  -all.  It  causes 
patriotism  when  extended  to  interests  which  work  for  national 
good. 

Clergymen  as  a  class  have  not  shown  love  of  neighboring  cler- 
gymen as  of  selves.  They  have  not  expressed  practical  sympa- 
thy with  the  problems  and  con'ditions  of  the  workingmen.  They 
have  not  sought  the  salvation  of  those  most  needing  it  as  con- 
spicuously, at  least,  as  those  whose  membership  would  enlarge 
their  clientele.  They  have  not  been  identified  with  movements 
to  purify  municipal  life  and  to  improve  the  conditions  which 
make  best  American  citizens. 

The  churches  may  disclaim  the  function  of  direct  and  corpo- 
i-ate  action,  but  they  do  affirm  the  theory  of  elevating  society  by 
difCusive  personal  influence. 

Even  in  this  position,  the  churches  of  New  York  City  are  not 
accomplishing  their  social  mission. 


APPENDIX.  137 

Back  of  each  church  should  be  the  whole  church.  The  most 
meagre  knowledge  of  our  churches  points  to  struggling  churches, 
forlorn  hopes,  and  pastors  breaking  down  under  the  burden. 

At  the  point  of  the  strongest  -attack,  reserves  should  be  mass- 
ed. There  are  no  reserves,  no  central  authority,  no  directing 
head. 

Truth  should  be  sown  among  the  people.  Up-town  and  central 
churches  are  elevators,  shooting  every  week  winnowed  grain 
upon  the  same  hearers.  Not  a  grain  for  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  citizens  whose  lives  are  worth  cultivating  and  who  sitarve  for 
lack  of  the  bread  of  life. 

The  lights  are  clustered  and  the  dark  places  are  blacker.  The 
leaven  and  the  masses  are  far  apart.  Not  the  ninety  and  nine 
are  to  be  left  and  the  one  i^ought.  To-day  there  are  ninety  astray 
and  ten  folded. 

The  leaven  is  placed  as  far  away  from  business  centres  as  con- 
venient. The  masses  live  as  near  to  business  as  possible.  Leav- 
ening is  not  an  easy  matter. 

One  who  is  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  church  and  the 
charities  it  inspires  may  claim  that  there  is  no  need  or  room  for 
any  more  work.  He  may  rightly  point  to  organizations  and 
functions  for  every  imaginable  need.  He  may  catch  the  enthu- 
siastic spirit  of  altruism  everywhere  abounding  in  good  works. 
He  may  eloquently  tell  the  story  of  the  founding  and  results  of 
our  Department  of  Public  Charities  and  Correction,  public 
schools  and  nigiht  schools.  Health  Department,  church  charities, 
shelters,  lodgings,  'nurseries,  employment  societies,  asylums, 
hospitals.  Charity  Organization  Society,  Children's  Aid,  Improv- 
ing the  Condition  of  the  Poor,  and  others  equally  commendable. 
He  may  affirm  that  such  a^n  exhibit  is  a  better  book  on  the  evi- 
dences of  Christianity  than  any  ever  written. 

Yet,  most  of  the  misery  met  by  these  agencies  could  not  exist 
haid  the  churches  done  their  duty  in  preventing  the  operation  of 
causes  producing  these  evils.  The  necessity  of  some  of  these  in- 
stitutions is  a  shame  to  our  civilization. 


138  APPENDIX. 

We  are  not  careful  enough  to  destroy  the  germs  of  moral  and 
social  ills.  Our  zeal  in  trying  to  heal  the  disease  is  therefore  less 
commendable. 

If  the  churches  cannot  destroy  the  moral  microbes  and  secure 
homes  against  a  pestilential  atmosphere  by  the  inspiration  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  they  will  surely  fail  in  accomplishing  their  social 
mission. 

In  view  of  the  emergency  that  confronts  the  churches,  chal- 
lenging their  ability  to  meet  it,  in  view  of  the  heavy  responsibil- 
ities weighting  the  churches  to  show  that  applied  Christianity 
is  adequate  to  elevate  society  to  its  ideal  and  normal  condition, 
and  considering  the  fact  that  the  church  has  not  yet  made  any 
earnest,  concerted  and  scientific  effort  to  act  corporately  or  dif- 
fuse its  resources  adequately,  the  question  is  agitating — then, 
what  are  the  churches  going  to  do  about  it? 

They  will  do  nothing  until  they  feel  the  necessity.  They  can- 
not do  anything  until  they  have  data  sufiicient  to  see  what  should 
be  done.  We  therefore  submit  evidences  of  existing  conditions 
which  make  it  impossible  for  the  churches  to  fulfil  their  social 
mission  in  New  York  City.  We  point  to  a  few  of  the  causes 
which  have  produced  these  conditions. 


Causes  and  Evidences. 


The  causes  in  the  churches  themselves  which  prevent  the  real- 
ization of  the  hig-hest  social  mission  are  denominational  individ- 
ualism and  "churchism."  Denominational  individualism  has 
placed  its  churches  without  regard  to  interdenominational  comi- 
ty. Denominational  glory  has  aroused  the  ambition  of  ministers. 
Churches  have  been  located  in  reference  to  a  good  clientele,  in- 
cidentally for  saving  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men. 

Competition  has  been  a  principle  of  action.  As  a  result  we 
have  to-day  too  many  churches,  and  we  have  not  enough  church- 
es. Too  many  for  the  church-goers.  Too  few  for  the  reail  work 
to  be  done  by  churches.  Too  many  in  one  locality.  Too  few 
where  most  needed. 

Another  effect  has  been  overlapping  of  work,  causing  waste 
of  workers  and  money.  Between  the  interstices  of  this  over- 
lapping thousands  of  neglected  souls  have  fallen  to  ruin. 

Churchism  determines  the  location  of  a  church  and  its  char- 
acter by  its  clientele.  It  causes  the  church  to  exist  for  itself  as 
an  institution.  As  money  must  be  had  to  support  it,  it  must  lo- 
cate where  a  few  wealthy  people  live,  or  where  many  well-to-do 
persons  may  be  reached.  As  a  result,  the  poor  and  those  most 
needing  saving  influences  are  neglected. 

The  church  on  this  basis  must  move  with  its  supporting  mem- 
bership. 

It  has  not  heeded  the  law  that  if  a  church,  as  truly  as  a  man, 
would  save  its  life  it  must  lose  it.  Consequently  we  have  wealthy 
churches  that  are  dead  to  the  purpose  of  their  real  existence, 
and  churches  among  the  poor  practically  dead  as  to  support  and 
equipment,  but  behold,  they  live  in  the  power  of  the  spirit. 

Also,  churchism  prevents  a  relization  of  the  broader  relations 
of  the  church  to  its  denomination,  to  the  church  at  large  and  to 


140  APPENDIX. 

fJhe  kingdom.  One  caoinot  see  the  kingdom  because  of  the 
churches. 

By  it  church  members  cannot  have  the  inspiration  of  the  high- 
est miotives  which  cause  liberality,  personal  service  and  spirit- 
uality. 

These  causes  have  prevented  any  interdenominational  effort 
to  swing  the  resources  of  the  churches  against  evils  which  threat- 
en social  well-being,  and  any  comity  which  might  secure  such  a 
distribution  of  churches  as  to  man  every  strategic  position  with 
strongest  Christian  influences. 

We  place  in  evidence  the  situation  of  the  churches,  showing 
how  inadequately  denominationalism  and  churchism  have  caus- 
ed the  location  of  centres  of  Christian  work. 

The  canvass  of  St.  Augustine's  parish  under  the  auspices  of 
the  Church  Temperance  Society  has  given  valuable  statistics 
which  we  may  use  in  connection  with  our  own  study  of  church 
distribution  in  the  city. 

One  dis'triot  with  a  population  of  16,391  bodies  has  one  saloon 
to  every  111  inhabitants,  and  one  church  to  every  8,196.  (See 
chart  No.  1.) 

This  means  that  dt  pays  brewers  to  locate  saloons  among  the 
pooresit  classes.  It  means  that  the  church  members  possessing 
one-fourth  of  our  wealth  evidently  do  not  think  that  it  will  pay 
to  put  there  more  tflijan  one  church  to  over  8,000  souls.  Each  of 
these  churches  has  at  leas^  7,000  persons  outside  of  its  clientele 
whom  it  cannot  posisibly  reach  by  even  its  indirect  influences. 
What  tare  the  churches  going  to  do  about  it? 

The  situation  is  worse  in  another  district,  with  one  saloon  to 
every  158,  and  one  church  to  every  9,422.    (See  charts  No.  2.) 

The  saloon  has  been  to  hundreds  the  only  shelter  on  wild, 
stormy  nights.  The  churches  are  occasionally  open  to  satisfy  a 
desire  which  is  felt  by  only  a  few.  The  churches  are  never 
crowded  beyond  their  capacity,  which  is  adequate  for  the  de- 
mand. 

It  should  be  noted  that  with  decreasing  church  privileges  cornea 


APPENDIX.  141 

shrinkage  of  church  clieatage.  With  increasing  of  church  staff 
of  workers  comes  improvement  of  neighborhood  and  faith  in  the 
church.  Beyond  the  reach  of  these  churches  are  8,000  souls  for 
each  church.    What  are  the  churches  going  to  do  about  it? 

In  the  third  district  the  situation  is  worst  of  all.  Among  49,- 
359  inhabitants  there  is  one  saloon  to  every  208,  one  church  to 
every  9,872.  With  such  a  ratio  what  are  the  churches  going  to 
do  to  save  our  city?  Such  evidence  that  these  people  do  not  want 
the  church  is  the  very  reason  why  the  churches  should  distribute 
their  full  energy  among  them  so  as  to  cause  them  to  want  a 
church.    (See  charts  No.  3.) 

It  has  been  estimated  that  the  90,000  inhabitants  of  this  par- 
ish pay  annually  into  the  saloons  an  average  per  individual  of 
$75.  The  average  'amount  paid  by  each  church  member  every 
year  to  all  church  expenses  and  work  is  not  over  $30.  It  may 
readily  be  seen  that  if  these  people  want  a  church  they  can  pay 
for  it.  To  make  them  want  it — that's  the  crux  of  all  our  work. 
The  sadness  of  it  is  that  they  care  less  land  Jess  for  it,  because 
they  feel  that  no  one  cares  for  them.  Were  the  whole  energy  of 
the  churches  put  forth  at  once,  it  would  be  too  late  to  bring  this 
generation  into  the  Kingdom.  It  is  not  too  late  to  save  the  chil- 
dren. 

In  this  one  parish  27,000  souls  beyond  the  touch  of  the  church- 
es!   What  are  the  churches  going  to  do  about  it? 

We  submit  the  condition  of  churches  as  related  to  siocial  life 
below  14th  Street.  With  a  population  of  about  700,000  what  can 
the  few  churches  do  toward  the  constructive  work  of  our  civili- 
zation? From  January  to  May  of  this  year  six  of  our  most  active 
pas>tors  have  resigned  because  they  could  not  endure  the  strain 
and  because  the  resources  at  their  command  were  pitiably  in- 
adequate to  relieve  the  distress  which  begged  assistance. 

Including  in  church  clientage  all  children  and  occasional  at- 
tendants, there  are,  outside  of  the  direct  touch  of  church  influ- 
ences, about  400,000  souls. 

What  can  the  8  Baptist  churches  with  2,992  members  efEect 
ftlone  there?    Or  the  efficient  city  missions  with  2,500  members? 


142  APPENDIX. 

Or  both  combined  with  7  Reformed  churches,  6  Lutheran,  16 
Presbyterian,  18  Methodist,  21  Jewish,  22  Episcopal  and  28  Ro- 
man Catholic?  One  hundred  and  thirty-five  churches,  including 
small  missions  and  schools,  are  doing  all  that  they  can  with  the 
means  at  their  command.  Add  to  them  the  charitable  institu- 
tions and  residential  settlements  and  distribute  all  agencies  so 
that  in  each  ward  every  social  need  should  be  met  by  a  special 
function  for  its  relief,  still  the  churches  would  be  powerless  to 
perform  their  function  of  transforming  home-life  by  personal  re- 
generation. Outward  changes  of  circumstances  without  inner 
change  of  life  is  labor  in  perpetuity. 

We  have  made  special  investigations  of  a  section  on  the  west 
side  of  the  city  up4)own.  This  section  includes  the  o-Id  Ninth, 
Thirteenth,  Fifteenth  and  Seventeenth  Assembly  Districts,  con- 
taining about  200,000  inhabitants.  The  churches  distributed 
there  are  7  Baptist,  1  Lutheran,  9  Methodisit,  6  Presbyterian,  5 
Reformed  and  United  Presbyterian,7  Episcopal,12  Roman  Cath- 
olic, and  9  other  denominations.    (See  charts  No.  5.) 

Every  church  or  chapel  is  worked  to  its  utmost,  and  yet  there 
are  more  tha.u  100,000  souls  bej'ond  the  reach  of  all  these 
churches. 

In  a  section  between  24th  and  59th  Streets,  west  of  Eighth 
Avenue,  there  is  but  one  church  to  10,561  of  population. 

In  the  same,  west  of  Ninth  Avenue,  one  church  to  14,580;  west 
of  Tenth  Avenue,  one  to  31,926. 

West  of  Tenth  Avenue,  between  40th  and  64th  Streets,  there 
is  only  one  church.  There  are  46,563  people  living  in  that  dis- 
trict. 

It  must  not  be  thought  that  there  are  not  enough  churches 
within  reach  of  these  multitudes  if  they  wished  to  go  to  them. 
The  significance  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  churches  are  not  doing 
anything  to  cause  them  to  wish  to  go.  Also,  that  such  people 
are  noit  desirable  material  for  membership  of  church  life  as  bas- 
ed on  "Churchism."  They  are  not  material  for  the  clientele  of 
the  churches.  Therefore  they  are  not  sought  and  churches  are 
nat  placed  in  their  midst. 


APPENDIX.  143 

It  is  said  that  between  86th  and  138th  Streets,  east  of  Fifth 
Avenue,  there  are  223,000  souls,  and  that  a  certain  denomina- 
tion has  but  one  church  in  that  district.  In  the  same  district, 
west  of  Fifth  Avenue,  there  are  72,000  souls,  and  this  denomi- 
nation has  nine  churches  among  them.  This  illustrates  "chureh- 
ism!    (See  chart  No.  5.) 

When  throughout  the  city  you  trace  the  direct  and  indirect  in- 
fluences of  church  life  upon  the  people  you  find  a  churchless  pop- 
ulation as  large  as  the  city  of  Brooklyn. 

What  are  the  churches  going  to  do  about  it? 

The  full  significance  of  these  statistics  is  not  felt  until  an 
analysis  is  made  of  the  intellectual,  social,  civic,  economic  and 
spiritual  condition  of  the  churchless  masses. 

Each  individual  is  a  person.  Personality  is  the  greatest  thing 
in  the  universe. 

Some  of  these  churchless  ones  are  homeless.  Thousands  live 
in  cheap  boarding  houses;  360,000  in  the  slums.  According  to 
Carroll  Wright's  census,  37.69  per  cent,  are  unable  to  read  or 
write,  52.44  per  cent,  are  voters,  62.38  per  cent.  Avere  born  in 
countries  in  a  eivilization  foreign  to  the  genius  of  our  institu- 
tions. In  our  tenements  there  is  an  average  of  37  persons  to  a 
dwelling. 

The  unit  of  the  social  organism  is  the  home.  The  type  of  larg- 
er social  life  is  found  in  the  relationships  of  family  life. 

The  specific  object  of  social  work  by  the  churches  should  be 
the  child.  In  these  tenements  are  147,000  children  under  five 
years  of  age;  50,000  are  school  truants.  Thousands  are  com- 
pelled to  work  who  should  be  at  school  or  at  play. 

Bad  homes  make  bad  children.  Over  half  of  the  young  crim- 
inals in  Elmira  Penitentiary  come  from  bad  homes. 

Bad  streets  make  them  worst;  97  per  cent,  in  this  penitentiary 
oome  from  bad  street  associates. 

Bad  surroundings  destroy  possibility  of  mature  strength.  The 
diseases  of  600  children  examined  were  traced  to  their  surround- 
ings and  not  to  hereditary  predisposition.    Medical  examination 


144  APPENDIX. 

of  530  of  the  tenement  children  showed  that  only  60  were 
healthy. 

Ignorance  of  how  to  live  and  how  to  meet  emergencies  causes 
loss  of  life.  "Poverty  and  ignorance  kill  and  cripple  more  than 
disease  germs," 

The  children  of  parents  who,  when  very  young,  were  made  to 
work  are  predesitinated  to  criminal  careers,' idiocy,  imbecility  or 
insanity. 

"Child  labor,  the  source  of  untodd  miseries  to  society,  has  in- 
creased during  the  last  fifteen  years  ovfer  100  pet  cent.  This,  in 
spite  of  compulsory  laws."  In  1887  the  Commissioner  of  Labor 
for  New  York  State  officially  wrote:  "Year  by  year  we  have 
seen  an  increase  in  the  demand  for  smaller  and  smaller  children 
until  it  became  a  veritable  robbery  of  the  cradle  to  supply  them." 

Ex-Supt.  Byrnes  has  said:  "The  tenement  is  one  of  the  big- 
gest cogs  in  the  machine  that  makes  criminals.  Its  associations 
are  dangerous  to  the  purity  of  women  and  the  honesty  of  men. 
It  is  certain  that  the  overcrowding  of  tenements  must  fill  chil- 
dren's minds  with  vicious  and  wicked  knowledge." 

What  are  the  churches  going  to  do  about  it? 

The  church  at  large  has  not  lifted  its  voiice  against  these  evil 
conditions  or  swung  its  forces  as  a  unit  in  behalf  of  the  social, 
civic,  indusitrial  or  spiritual  elevation  of  these  homes. 

It  is  moral  character  that  affects  our  social  and  civic  condi- 
tions and  largely  fixes  economic  values. 

We  submit  that  character-making  is  a  function  of  the  church- 
es. This  will  always  be  left  to  the  churches.  In  view  of  the 
evidences  what  are  they  going  to  do  about  it? 


Federation  of  tlie  Churclies— The  Remedy. 


Tho  problem  for  the  churches  to  solve  is  how  to  bring  such 
conditions  into  harmony  with  the  laws  and  ideals  of  the  King- 
dom of  God. 

Before  anything  can  be  done,  social  facts  must  be  carefully 
ascertained  so  that  we  may  know  what  is  needed.  The  work  of 
existing  societies  must  be  examined  so  that  its  value  may  be  de- 
termined, its  lack  supplemented  and  its  weakness  made  strong. 
The  resources  and  reserves  of  the  churches  must  be  applied  to 
overthrow  evils  and  to  maintain  whatever  is  good.  Loyalty  to 
the  Christ  must  precede  loyalty  to  the  church.  The  true  aim  of 
the  body  of  Christ  must  clearly  be  kept  in  sight.  The  harmoni- 
ous working  of  its  members  must  be  secured. 

The  method  of  Christ  and  of  the  Apostles  in  working  reform 
from  the  bottom  of  society  upward  must  be  adopted  by  the 
churches.  The  Church  of  Jesus  Christ  is  eminently  for  work- 
ingmen.  The  "Labor  Church"  can  never  be  a  substitute  for  it. 
Human  well-being  must  be  sought  directly  for  the  sake  of  the 
man,  without  any  reference  to  even  indirect  gain  to  the  church. 

The  present  arrangements  and  locations  of  churches  and  agen- 
cies need  readjusting  to  secure  economy  and  greatest  efficiency. 
The  power  of  the  whole  church  must  be  felt  to  be  behind  each 
church  in  order  that  the  weakest  may  be  honored — just  as  the 
whole  personality  is  back  of  the  function  of  each  member  of  our 
body.  '    ;   ! 

It  must  be  maintained  that  the  churches  are  adequate  to  effect 
social  reforms.  That  the  passionate  altruism  which  is  doing  so 
much  in  organizing  relief  for  every  possible  need  cannot  take  the 
place  of  the  personal  sympathy  and  love  inspired  by  the  Christ 
as  a  transforming  or  reforming  agent.  That  socialism  of  city 
or  State  simply  throws  upon  the  churches  a  heavier  degree  of 
responsibility  to  form  the  best  character. 


U6  APPENDIX. 

We  must  remember  that  after  twenty  years  of  "Practicable 
Socialism"  in  East  London,  Canon  Barnett,  of  Toynbee,  con- 
fesses to  disappointment  in  the  results — ^"the  standard  of  life  is 
still  far  lower  than  it  should  be." 

It  is  evident  that  such  a  problem  appeals  to  all  the  churches. 
No  one  denomination  can  work  it  out.  Each  denomination  is 
inextricably  involved  in  it.  The  solution  demands  interdenomi- 
national action — not  undenominational.  United  effort  of  all 
churches  is  necessary  whenever  public  sentiment  is  to  be  agitat- 
ed or  public  opinion  directed  in  right  direction. 

Instead  of  united  sentiment  and  clearness  of  testimony,  we 
have  had  an  occasional  sermon,  a  casual  recommendation,  an 
ofiieial  deliverance.  Nothing  concentrated — no  action  all  along 
the  line. 

To  cause  the  opinion  of  the  churches  to  be  respected,  there 
should  be  a  common  expression  through  some  common  medium. 
To  direct  opinion,  the  church  and  press  should  unite  in  simulta- 
neous agitation  on  all  social  and  civic  interests. 

Interdenominational  action  is  necessary  to  secure  means  to 
prevent  waste  by  overlapping  of  work,  to  voice  common  senti- 
ment, express  common  sympathy,  apply  the  concentrated  power 
of  the  churches  when  necessary,  to  co-ordinate  the  work  of  the 
charitable  institutions,  to  use  their  functions  and  strengtheoi 
their  effectiveness,  and  to  do  everything  to  realize  the  social  mis- 
sion of  the  kingdom  of  Christ. 

It  seems  that  the  most  practicable  method  by  which  interde- 
nominational action  m.ay  effect  such  an  end  is  federation  of  the 
individual  churches.  Such  federation  would  secure  a  representa- 
tive body  which,  through  its  members,  would  practically  unite 
all  the  churches  on  a  common  basis  and  be  in  touch  with  e<ach 
of  them. 

It  would  elect  a  Central  Council,  made  up  of  one  clergyman 
and  one  lay  member  from  each  denomination.  This  Council, 
while  having  no  authority  over  tl^e  co-operating  churches,  would 
be  the  governing  body  of  the  Federation.    It  would  appoint  com- 


APPENDIX.  147 

missions  and  cammittees,  and  recommend  sudh  action  to  the  con- 
sideration of  the  co-operating  churches  as  would  tend  to  secure 
the  siocial  mission  of  the  churches. 

The  discussion  of  its  recommendations  and  the  presentation 
of  the  ascertained  needs  of  our  city  by  experts  would  practically 
form  an  inrt:erdenominational  social  union  with  its  many  advan- 
tages. 

It  would  furnish  an  occasion  for  the  interchange  of  methods 
of  church  work  and  the  discussion  of  questions  of  mutual  in- 
terest. 

It  would  present  to  the  world  an  object  lesson  of  the  structure 
of  the  kingdom — each  denomination  preserving  its  individuality 
and  all  co-operating  in  love  and  strength  for  the  purpose  of 
bringing  the  joy  of  heaven  into  the  homes  on  earth. 

It  would  show  the  practical  creed  of  all  the  denominations. 

It  would  affirm  the  living  Christ  as  the  basis  of  union. 

It  would  present  a  sense  of  united  action  from  which  would 
arise  a  motive  so  strong  that  under  its  pressure  workers  and 
money  would  be  consecrated  to  the  work  of  saving  the  homes  of 
our  city. 

It  would  awaken  a  power  which  intelligently  directed  and  per- 
sistently applied  could  effect  any  desired  reform. 

This,  we  believe,  is  the  only  practicable  remedy  under  present 
conditions.  The  time  is  ripe  for  it.  The  pressing  question  then 
is,  "What  ds  my  church  going  to  do  about  it?  Canton  Westcott 
has  saiid:  "If  the  church  is  to  perform  its  social  function  there 
must  not  be  a  single  person  in  it  without  a  ministry  for  others. 
The  way  of  action  will  be  made  clear  as  soon  as  the  spirit  of 
action  (has  gained  power." 


149 


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